More heavy rain & storms Thu. 2-3" amounts were common. Check out the photos below from:
-- Hollie Tapley - (1) I-95 near Nassau/Duval Co. line, (2) Duval St.
-- Brooke Azzaro, JTB
-- Mike Cornell, St. Augustine
-- Mike Baker, I-295/Gate Parkway
-- Shawn Norton, Atlantic Blvd. ("Trouble Ahead, Trouble Behind")
-- Paul Hargreaves, Fernandina Beach
-- Kim Good, Yulee
-- Ian Acree
-- 2 Jack Hanania skycam views -- the first from the World Golf Village looking NW at billowing thunderheads (cumulonimbus clouds)... the second from the Clarion Hotel at JIA looking NW at a rainbow.
Heat, humidity & scattered showers, a few storms will continue Fri. through Sun. before we finally see a break with cooler temps. & lower humidity much of next week.
"Shout out" to Providence Child Development Center where I visited Thu.
Earth Gauge: Bio-What?
There are many ways to curb the amounts of excess nutrients entering lakes, rivers and streams – a bioretention system is one of them. Bioretention systems – also called rain gardens – are landscape best management practices (BMPs) that use filtration to treat storm water runoff in a depressed area. They can be implemented in residential areas with trees, shrubs and grasses to catch rainwater during and after a storm. As the vegetated area receives the water, it filters it through the soil and plants, removing nutrients before the water reaches a water body.
Tip: According to a recent study, bioretention systems were able to remove 47 to 68 percent of phosphorus from runoff. Installing a bioretention area near your house can add natural beauty and help protect water quality in local water bodies. For more information on these systems and how they work, visit bioretention (rain gardens).
(Sources: EPA, “Bioretention (Rain Gardens); Hsieh, C. and Davis, A.P., “Multiple-event Study of Bioretention for Treatment of Urban Storm Water Runoff,” 2003; Image courtesy of the EPA.)
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Climate Number: 29 Teragrams of Carbon
The rapid expansion of drought conditions over the contiguous United States during the past year led to the largest moderate to extreme drought coverage since the 1950s. While the epicenter of the current drought is in the Midwest and central Plains, the drought of the 1950s was centered in the West. The total national extent and duration of the 1950s drought was larger, but the drought experienced from 2000 to 2004 was likely the most severe the West has experienced in at least 800 years. Looking at the past 1,200 years, droughts of similar severity affected the West from 977 to 981 and from 1146 to 1151, although the area these droughts covered was probably not as extensive as the area covered during the 2000 to 2004 drought. The lack of rainfall and increased water loss during drought events limits plant growth. When plants grow, they use sunlight to drive a series of chemical reactions that turn water and carbon dioxide into the carbohydrates used to build plant tissue. The total amount of carbon an area of land absorbs in a year minus the amount of carbon sent back out into the atmosphere is the area’s net primary productivity (NPP). NPP is an important measure for monitoring ecosystem trends and the composition of the atmosphere. The lower48 United States has a total NPP of 3.1 petagrams –3,100,000,000,000,000 grams or 68,000,000,000,000 pounds. Agriculture accounts for about 20 percent of that NPP. During the 2000 to 2004 drought, crop productivity in the West declined due to lack of rainfall and warm temperatures. On average, about 550 teragrams (1,200,000,000,000 pounds) of carbon are taken-up by farms in the West each year. During the drought this number declined to 521 teragrams, a 29 teragram (64,000,000,000 pound), or five percent drop.
For comparison: 29 teragrams of carbon is about the same amount of carbon that would be emitted by a mid-sized car driving 230 billion miles. It is about nine percent of the weight of all the corn grown in America in a year of average production.
(Sources: Lobell, DB et al. “Satellite estimates of productivity and light use efficiency in United States agriculture, 1982-1998.” Global Change Biology 8 (2002): 722-735 and Schwalm, CR et al. “Reduction in carbon uptake during turn of the century drought in western North America.” Nature Geoscience 5 (2012): 551-556.)
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Climate in the News: “Saturn’s Moon Titan Shows Surprising Seasonal Changes.” – Science Daily, September 28, 2012.
Like Earth, Titan has axial tilt, giving it seasons and providing scientists with extraterrestrial laboratory useful for better understanding Earth’s climate.
