How corn may be helping Michigan keep its cool
From the “corn is not climate” department and David Veselenak, The Grand Rapids Press
Grand Rapids hasn’t seen the thermometer break 100 degrees since 1988. Some climatologists say the reason is corn.
In fact, since 1953, Grand Rapids has seen the thermometer hit 100 degrees only three times. Since 1894, Grand Rapids has had 30 days reach the triple figure temperature mark.
One theory: more corn has been planted the past 60 years, increasing the amount of water vapor released into the atmosphere. That decreases the amount of energy available to heat the air.
…
“From the 1930s to the 1950s, it looks like (the temperature) was typical. But after the 1950s, it wasn’t typical,” he said. “Clearly, something was going on in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, and it could have been agricultural practice.”
And the numbers support that claim. According to Iowa State University, corn production yields have jumped and so has the acreage committed to corn. In 2010, record amounts of land in the United States was being used for corn planting, with 87.87 million acres of corn, up from 86.5 million in 2009.
read the rest of the story here: How corn may be helping Michigan keep its cool
h/t to Steve Mosher via Facebook
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Actually there is a correlation to corn shocks. When they got rid of them the heat went down. They must have been lightening rods for drawing heat.
Sounds pretty corny to me.
I remember some years back watching an agri-business TV show in the wee hours because I couldn’t sleep and there weren’t even any bad infomercials on.
On of the guests was an exec from ADM and the discussion was corn, and ADM announced that it was shifting 10-15% of it’s crop total to corn. The reason? Subsidies for corn based ethanol made corn more profitable than other crops. I was, of course, stunned to see that ADM would stoop to such profiteering. Stunned, I tell you.
Seriously, here’s just one more perfect example of how land use is changing climate with likely far more impact than the attendent increase in CO2, which paradoxically enhances the …. cooling effect by helping corn to grow.
It is easily proven that an increase in humidity increases the heat required to take it over 100 Degrees. I have flown into Grand Rapids many times and remember it is near the lake. What is the surface temperature on lake Michigan?
Since the AGW’s are big on demanding that CO2 causes heat increase, the corn fields are areas of low CO2 and soak up over 13,000 Kilos per acre of the stuff.
But… isn’t water vapor also a powerful greenhouse gas?
Could it be producing cooling at the surface level and still generating heat at higher levels? Someone get me a grant!
The ineffable Richard Black at the Beeb has this Rice yields falling under global warming. As I read it, warmer daytime temps’ push the yields up, which they have been doing, but warmer nighttime temps’ push them down. The story seems to say that overall yields are still rising, but “at some time in the future”, they will drop. Given that even the high end of their predictions (lots of “coulds” and “mays” in this little gem) only get us into MWP territory, you have to wonder how we made it out of the Middle Ages.
REPLY: I saw the press release earlier on it, looking into it. -Anthony
So, it’s settled then. We plant. And Earth is saved.
Simple fix, build a large airport, move the thermometers there. And remember UHI is irrelevant.
Is anyone watching the weather channel right now? The global warming drum beat is marching.
I thought this looked familiar, Chicago Tribune also covered this in the spring:
“Amid one of the warmest springs on record in Chicago, and renewed worries about our warming planet, how is it that late summer days across the Midwest are cooling?
The answer may be in the towering, tightly packed rows of corn that blanket Illinois at harvest and the ripple effects from industrialized farming that scientists are only beginning to understand.”
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-05-12/news/ct-met-weather-crops-20100511_1_water-vapor-climate-scientists-midwest
…not to slight the good agronomy scientists in Michigan, mind you!
This didn’t work when I was in Iowa. Corn as far as the eye could see and plenty hot, especially if you were in the corn rows detasseling.
Dear Henry and DJ Meredith…
I think any increase in water vapor density is a good explanation over increases of local temperature. I have made some calculations (very accurate) on the available microstates in water vapor (4% of the mixture of gases in the atmosphere) and carbon dioxide (0.038% of the mixture of gases in the atmosphere) and found the water vapor is the main interferer of photons, as from the solar photon stream as from the surface photon stream. Carbon dioxide doesn’t make a big difference:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=6111&linkbox=true&position=7
Please, read the comments below the article because some gremlins of grammar and distraction crept into the text when I was writing the paper. 🙂
Dear Anthony, sorry for promoting my article; I think those calculations are the key on this issue. Many thanks! 🙂
Having spent most of my weather forecasting days in Grand Rapids, I believe it is more than just corn crops that have prevented our highs from reaching 100 degrees. Since 1964, the high has only hit 100 twice. But take a look at this week in 1936:
7/8 101 in 1936
7/9 101 in 1936
7/10 102 in 1936
7/11 99 in 1936
7/12 106 in 1936
7/13 108 in 1936
7/14 102 in 1936
Look at this period in 1934:
7/20 99 in 1934
7/21 104 in 1934
7/22 97 in 1934
7/23 101 in 1934
7/24 103 in 1934
7/25 100 in 1934
Truly amazing. What is also interesting is that Grand Rapids has only failed to drop below 80 degrees for a minimum temperature twice in the entire record since 1892. Once in 1995 and then way back in 1902.
If the lack of heat recently has been that dramatic due to higher dew points from the corn (an acre of corn during peak growing season can give off around 4,000 gallons of water to the air EACH DAY), then why haven’t the higher dew points kept temperatures at night warmer? I think this is MUCH too simple an explanation and likely only plays a very small role.
Ahh, but corn is also a fertilizer hog, especially nitrogen. Which means the field must be regularly replenished with N. Which, in commercial quantities, is made from natural gas/oil/coal ( to obtain the required hydrogen ) via the Haber–Bosch process. The Haber process is important because ammonia is difficult to produce on an industrial scale, and the fertilizer generated from the ammonia is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth’s population.
So in order to use increased corn production to reduce or control temperature would require an equivalent increase in Haber process fertilizer production and distribution thereof. You just can’t do it with only cow patties and crop rotation.
Drill baby, dig baby. TANSTAFL rules.
I believe that the increased yields of corn in the US Midwest has increased the amount of water vapor in our atmosphere, which lowers the daytime high temperatures and raises the night temperatures. Overall, the amount of water transpired to the atmosphere in the US Midwest is greater today than it was a half century ago just based on changes in agricultural practices and corn production: the more plants and greater yields per acre imply an increased need for and use of water by corn. All plants transpire, that is, release water vapor into the atmosphere through their leaves. Corn is unique in that it belongs to a family of plants that transpire, or sweat, both day and night. Stand in any large cornfield and you can feel the increased humidity. The average corn yields in Illinois have increased from about 50 bushels per acre in 1950 to more than 130 bushels per acre in 2000. Planting densities climbed dramatically as well, from about 18,000 seeds per acre to nearly 30,000 seeds per acre during the 1970s, when farmers started planting crop rows closer together. The higher the dew-point value the more difficult it is for the human body to cool itself through evaporation from the skin.
http://www.niu.edu/pubaffairs/RELEASES/2002/aug/corn.shtml
Not to too my own horn, but I had a very similar post in the notes and tip section that appears to be gone?
What’s up with that???
Illinois, like Michigan: “While average global temperatures rose about 0.74 degrees Celsius during the past century, the U.S. Midwest has experienced a noticeable slump in summer temperatures in recent decades … the recent cool temperatures seem to be part of a steady long-term decline in summertime highs in Chicago”
See: http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/RS_Illinois.htm
is this corn making it cooler anecdotal proof that man affects climate?
In case the way back machine can’t find it:
http://globe.geog.niu.edu/directory/Dave_Changnon_Research.shtml
He has a theory that transpiration from crops are leading to larger storms and that all of the irrigation for crops is cooling the Midwest.
“Rain follows the plow”
(Well it works until it doesn’t work)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain_follows_the_plow
I’m more inclined to believe this is a function of cold Lake Michigan and prevailing westerly flow. I live about 3 miles west of the lake. An east wind can easily drop the temperature 20-30F, depending on time of year. With Grand Rapids being east of the lake (albeit 30-or-so miles), a prevailing west wind will certainly have a moderating effect.
It seems to me that the real question is the difference between growing corn and growing anything else. Corn might account for a certain amount of water vapor, but to make any historical reference, it needs to be compared to what was growing before corn, even if that was just prairie grass.
That said, here in Kansas, the daytime temps are nowhere near records, heat wave or not. Our records were still mostly set in the 1930s.
Correlation isn’t causation. If more water vapor is being released as a result of more corn being grown, then I would hesitate to suggest growing corn decreases temperature.
We all know water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas.
I would suspect off-hand that perhaps there has been a change is wind patterns in the area before I considered corn growing as the cause of less/no 100 degree days.
Obviously air circulation doesn’t at all depend on the moisture generated from growing corn locally, winds blow from many miles away. I suspect that perhaps more wind has been blowing down from the North for whatever reason.
This reduces the longwave radiation available for GHGs to absorb because the plants use it for photosynthesis.
@ur momisugly starzmom:
Same in OH. There are July records as high as 110 from back in the 19th century. But I would bet my bottom dollar that there is more corn here now.