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Vermont’s changing weather and climate: Insight interview with Laura Vien on PEG-TV

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Date of Talk:
April 18th, 2012

Rutland PEG-TV Insight interview with Laura Vien on Vermont’s changing weather and climate, April 18, 2012 (30mins)

The link is http://www.uvm.edu/~epscor/new02/?q=node/825

This 30-min interview discusses what is happening to the weather and climate of Vermont as the global climate changes. It covers the warm dry winter of 2011-2012, the very wet spring and summer of 2011 which brought us two major floods, and the very warm 2012 spring; and the increase in extremes associated with quasi-stationary weather patterns. As winters get less severe, more hardy crops are overwintering under cover and the summer growing season in increasing. It explains some of the climate processes: the increasing greenhouse gases coming from the burning of fossil fuels and the three-fold amplification from more evaporation of water as the Earth warms, and the drop in reflection of sunlight as snow and ice decrease in winter and in the Arctic.

Author Note: This unscripted and unedited interview contains a misleading statement - a reference to the ground warming in winter with no snow. This is misleading because the ground cools in winter over 24 hours (and warms in summer). When there is no snow, the sun's energy may warm the ground in the daytime, but the cooling by longwave radiation during the long nights gives a net 24hr cooling.

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