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Will this be an warmer El Niño winter?

The NOAA Climate.gov article Another mild winter? NOAA’s 2018-19 winter outlook by Mike Halpert (10/22/18) discusses the likelihood of El Niño this winter and the impact on temperatures.  The discussion of prediction and probabilities can be used in QL and stats courses: I again remind readers (if this seems repetitive, well, it …

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How are climatic zones changing?

The Yale Environment 360 article Redrawing the Map: How the World’s Climate Zones Are Shifting  by Nicola Jones (10/23/18)  provides animated maps, such as the one below, and quantitative statements about changing ecology including rates (great for a calculus class): Lauren Parker and John Abatzoglou of the University of Idaho tracked what would …

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What is the relationship between rates of suspension by race and free and reduced lunch?

Propublica’s article, Miseducation – Is There Racial Inequality at Your School? by  Lena V. Groeger, Annie Waldman and David Eads, (10/16/18), provides data by state on the percent of nonwhite students, the percent of students who get free/reduced-price lunch, high school graduation rate, the number of times White students are likely to be in an …

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Who misses school the most?

The EPI article,  Student absenteeism – Who misses school and how missing school matters for performance by Emma García and Elaine Weiss (9/25/18) provides a detailed account of absenteeism based on race and gender.  For example, their chart here is the percent of students that missed three or more days in the month prior to …

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What is in the new IPCC report?

The is too much in the new IPCC report (released this week) to cover here, but we can highlight a couple of points. The first is their graph copied here.  The main graph provides projections for change in global temperature based on what happens to CO2 and non-CO2 radiative forcing …

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Who perceives our economic system as fair or not fair?

The Pew Research Center’s article Partisans are divided over the fairness of the U.S. economy – and why people are rich or poor by Amina Dunn (10/4/18) provides interesting results about perceptions of our economic system. Around six-in-ten U.S. adults (63%) say the nation’s economic system unfairly favors powerful interests, compared with …

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How well do we understand rising sea levels?

NASA’s Vital Signs of the Planet feature,  Keeping score on Earth’s rising seas by Pat Brennan (9/1918) summarizes a recent paper that  “ ‘closes’ the sea-level budget to within 0.3 millimeters of sea-level rise per year since 1993.” A just-published paper assembles virtually all the puzzle pieces – melting ice, warming and …

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How much have fall temperatures risen?

According to the Climate Central post, Fall Warming Trends Across the U.S. (9/5/18), the average fall temperature for the U.S. has risen nearly 3°F since 1970 (see their graph copied here).  Why does this matter: Insects linger longer into the fall when the first freeze of the season comes later in the …

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