Under the ever-changing Sonora Desert sky, straddling the Arizona-Mexico border, an unassuming little fruit called the chiltepin pepper has kept cool in the shade of cliff sides for millennia. And while it thrives in these protected enclaves of the high desert, it packs heat matched only by the noonday sun.
Here’s the new and improved version of the book cover. We hear it may yet get tweaked a little bit, but we’ll see when the real thing hits shelves starting in March.
Iowa has experienced numerous extreme weather events in the past 20 years that have caused substantial destruction of property, economic loss and disruption of individual and community patterns of life. Extreme events are a part of “normal” climate, but the frequency of these events is changing and Iowa needs to plan for the future.
Climate change is much more complex than simply a rise in temperature as suggested by the term “global warming.” Other climate factors – specifically the frequency of extreme precipitation events, rise in humidity, lack of extreme summer heat and length of the growing season – are having much more impact on Iowa than changes in annual average temperature. We need to understand how climate change could affect agriculture, our health, the state’s wildlife and our economy.
