WHAT WE MAY EXPERIENCE IN 2016
Art Douglas from Creighton University is always a big draw at the Farm Forum in Spokane. Many people make farm decisions from his prognostications, --including us. This is how I interpreted his 2016 comments for the inland northwest.
---El Nino is here for a second year. It's very strong, but will start moving out in a couple of months.
---Not expecting any arctic blasts. These events will stay east of the Rocky's. Some cold temperatures, but not severe.
---late winter & spring looks good, with a little above average moisture, and average to cooler temperatures. The month of May, could be quite warm but with good moisture to get the crops through it. Putting up quality hay may be difficult, and harvesting in July may be problematic from rain showers. Pastures should be good.
---August is expected to be dry, so the majority of grain harvest in the Palouse should go well.
---Fall and winter is expected to be cool and wet. We should get a good start on the fall planted crops.
CLIMATE CHANGE:
---Current CO2 and temperature levels are not nearly as high as they have been at times in the past according to ice core samples taken from the Antarctic dating back 400,000 years.
---Oceans are tremendous CO2 sinks. When they warm, CO2 is expelled into the atmosphere. When they cool, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The oceans, being warm are expected to start cooling.
---Sun flares/spots are decreasing so the energy coming to the earth is decreasing. This will have an influence on ocean temperature. There are indications that the planet temperature may be peaking; however, there will likely be a runout of another 10-15 years for this warming period (cycle).
---The Capital Press reported differently from what I heard. They reported that Douglas stated the 0.7 degree (C) increase widely reported the past two years was 50-50 between natural climatic variability, and man. I heard 0.1 degree of the 0.7, was probably man caused, with the remainder due to natural climatic variability, and sun energy variability.
---Have I mis-interpretated, or left out a significant point, leave a comment!
Didn't make it up to hear in person that day but heard it from people that did and of course what they wrote in the papers. My takeaways were it's going to be good overall conditions for small grains through this summer. With an early, warm, wet spring, I believe it will pay to be ahead of schedule with our spring operations (assuming we can get in the fields). I also think that rust could be a issue this year so it will not be a season to cut back on fungicides at herbicide timing.
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