How Climate Change is Affecting East Texas
Climate Central/CBS 19
By MEGAN WILLIAMS/Staff Writer
East Texas hit a high mean average last summer of nearly 87 degrees, compared to 2011 still holding a record temperature of more than 90 degrees, according to Brett Anthony (KYTK) at CBS 19.
Global Temperatures
According to experts, high rates of rapid combustion over time accelerate global temperatures, which destroys crops and livestock. This implicates a problem through loss of food and species which poses a risk to animals on land, in the ocean, and forces relocation. The act of producing food creates emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and various greenhouse gases.
“We find that when we look through the human past, climate has been tremendously important to our successes and failures,” UT Tyler professor Thomas Guderjan, Ph.D., said.
East Texas Farmers
Dean Fosdick via AP News
Warmer seasonal temperatures cause a disruption for large scale orchard growers that farm fruit such as blueberries, strawberries and peaches, which starts to bloom too early, say experts. Growing fruit, like peaches require chill hours, which are measured in days, and Tyler needs on average 700 to 800 for healthy crops.
During those chill hours, the temperature is between 32 to 45 degrees. A continuation of warm weather will cause an early bloom, which kills the bud when those temperatures start to drop between 32 to 28 degrees.
The large issue is that warmer temperatures cause drought, which “will hurt crop yields and growers will also face earlier disease and more insect problems than they’re used to,” said Joseph G. Masabni in an article in FreshPlaza on warmer temperatures in East Texas.
He is a specialist with the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University. Droughts being a threat to agriculture and sustainable development may affect East Texas food production, five to eight years from now.
An extreme dry period, creates water shortages in lakes and reservoirs and will cause massive damage to ecosystems. Rapid increases in global temperatures are caused by human activity and “climate change is natural, yes, but we as a species have been speeding it up.
Cloud seeding is a factor as well,” said Taylor Dunn on a Facebook discussion post, in the East Texas Farming and Gardening group. “Cutting down forests do affect the local environment immediately, but we are all affected by the losses of those areas. The closer it is to home, the worse your effects.”
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