Guest post by David Archibald
I will be giving a lecture in Washington in early June on my way through to the Bahamas. Following are the slides that pertain to the agricultural impact of the current de Vries cycle event – the Eddy Minimum.
The stippled line is the current Canadian wheat-growing area. The heavy black line is what that would shrink to if temperature fell by one degree Celsius. Friis-Christensen and Lassen theory applied to the temperature records of the northeastern US derive a temperature decline of 2.0 degrees Celsius to the latitude of the US-Canadian border. It therefore follows that Canadian agriculture will be back to trapping beavers by the end of this decade, as it was in the 17th century.
Many years ago, in the time before global warming corrupted most branches of science, researchers looked at the consequences of warming and cooling. Newman in 1980 was such a researcher. This is a figure he provided of where the US Corn Belt would shift to with one degree of warming, the dashed line, and one degree of cooling, the solid line. The current corn growing area is shaded. His calculation of 144 km per degree C is in line with my estimate of a 300 km shift southward in growing conditions.
And corn is a big business in the United States:
The large amount of ethanol production is a good thing in that it provides a buffer of capacity in the climatic event under way. The mandated ethanol requirement has brought the future forward.
Archeological records tell it that it has happened before. The map in the following graphic shows how Indian maize growing moved south in response to the onset of the Little Ice Age (Reiley 1979).
But it can get worse than the standard de Vries cycle climate response. That can be overprinted by a major volcanic eruption:
Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991 and 1992 averaged 0.5 degrees C cooler as a consequence. The Dalton Minimum’s major volcanic eruption was Mt Tambora:
My generation has known a warm, giving Sun, but the next will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful.
The Australian Prime Minister spoke recently of the benefits of reading Bible stories. The Bible story that all governments should be paying particular attention to is the one in Genesis about the seven years of fat followed by the seven years of lean. Otherwise another Biblical character will make his appearance – the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse, Famine.
References
Newman, J. E. (1980). Climate change impacts on the growing season of the North American Corn Belt. Biometeorology, 7 (2), 128-142.
Riley, T. J., and Friemuth, G. (1979). Field systems and frost drainage in the prehistoric agriculture of the Upper Great Lakes. American Antiquity, 44 (2), 271-285.
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We’re already in different territory
http://www.weatherbell.com/jd/?p=1509
David, I think you’re spot on….
I don’t know why that is considered the “corn belt”, but it is.
Fro example both Florida and Georgia have about 1/2 billion acres of corn, each.
Related: Global Weather Impacts
http://www.weatherbell.com/jd/?p=1526
Just when it appears that volcanic activity is trending down then comes an increase in Italy. It just ding dang has to wait, in one certain area it could potentially kill my high flying new stock that’s ramping up like the sun was! We be Jammin!!!!
Just so you know, they don’t fgrow wheat in most of the area that is marked in the stipple.
….the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse
Please, no more Apocalypse! Should we replace one fear campaign with another? I have fond memories of the cool measured language of science smoothing through the emotional roller-coaster of social panic that suddenly sees us all cheering the mitigation of evil — whether by burning witches or by burning ethanol.
Any comments on why the citrus belt is headed south? –AGF
The ancient Egyptians had grain silos capable of sustaining people for seven years. The current ‘just in time’ market-maker driven agricultural supply chain would last about seven months.
Hypothetical question :
Enhanced levels of atmospheric CO2 have been shown to have beneficial effects on plant growth – principally because it enables them to use water more efficiently.
Could this, in theory, also make them more tolerant of lower temperatures to the extent that they may be better equipped to survive very slight frosts in the event of temperatures falling below freezing for a very short period of time?
Something that may be worthy of investigation IMO, although finding research funds to investigate a possible beneficial effect of CO2 may prove to be a sticking point in the current climate.
Despite the sun winding down,
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC2.htm
if there is a significant cooling at the same time (I do not think it will be excessive), then science is going to have a ‘hot potato’ on its hands, and I do not have the TSI or solar in mind.
Crop damage from cold weather is caused by cell damage from expanding water.
If higher CO2 leads to lower crop water content, then frost hardiness could increase. I can’t think of a reason why it would, but maybe it does.
But higher CO2 does make most plants grow faster so you don’t need as long of a grow season.
At the end of the day, falling temperatures reduce the planet’s carrying capacity much faster than rising temperatures do, so cold is the far scarier climate change.
Here’s a photo that my wife took in the morning on May 11th, 2011, in South Colorado:
http://www.pbase.com/maria_s/image/134639090.jpg
Snowfall continued for several hours after this photo has been taken.
While there were in the past some freezing temperatures at night in May and June where we live, this daytime snowfall was the latest observed since we moved here in 1991. A week later than the previous record on May 4th, 2007.
The green guzzling BC Government’s carbon tax works marvels! Vancouver had something like the coldest April on record… sarc/off
“The ancient Egyptians had grain silos capable of sustaining people for seven years.”
Those evil grain fat-cats! What they needed was Grain Re-Investment Legislation in order to get through the seven years of lean, which, let me be clear, were a direct result of the failed policies of the previous pharoh…
/snark
There have been an enormous number of open field enriched CO2 experiments using equipment designed and furnished by Brookhaven National Laboratory. The results are never reported in the MSM and Greens avoid the topic. Thus far there have been no results indicating that any plant species would suffer as a consequence of atmospheric CO2 enrichment. Plants with all three known photosynthetic metabolic pathways benefit to some degree. Plants using the C3 pathway go hog wild and grow dramatically. The growth rate of C3 trees has greatly increased over the last 30 years. The results are absolutely stunning. C4 plants like corn respond well but nowhere as well as C3 plants. Plants using the CAM pathway enjoy minor but nonetheless notable benefits.
If you want to learn more about the impact of CO2 enrichment on corn I suggest this link: http://www.co2science.org/subject/subject.php. There is a wealth of information there you will find nowhere else.
Just a layman’s question:
Does the annual temperature ever vary by more than 1 degree C in the particular growing region? If so, then it would not be correct to say that a 1 degree change sometime in the future would prevent the crop from growing in that region. Further, an annual crop is affected by the temperatures of particular seasons only, rather than even the annual or some longer-term average. If the crop can in fact grow in a temperature range larger than 1 degree C, then it’s not clear to me that a 1 degree average change at some point in the future will make that much difference. Most plants, including wheat, seem able to grow over a much larger temperature range than 1 degree C.
The Apocalypse, really…?
Was that pertinent to your point?
Good grief Charlie Brown, You’re a block head!
Every good “what if” needs the end of the world attached to the end./ sarc.
Please lighten up.
Roy’s explaination for the UAH graph. If pinatubo (VEI 6) caused the 1991-1995 small dip in temp, what the heck caused the more severe 1983-1988 dip? UAH followers have been happy to either not ask this question or assert ‘nothing caused it’, while totally accepting a VEI 6 for the smaller dip.
Anything is possible says:
May 12, 2011 at 2:46 pm
‘Fraid not. There’s more libraries full of literature & research on what makes plants grow better or worse than Carter has Little Liver Pills. Optimum growth temperature rises with rising CO2. The primary benefit, by the way, isn’t getting along with less water, it’s very accelerated growth rates. CO2 is always a limiting factor in plant growth rate at today’s concentration. There may be other limiting factors but given adequate nutrients, water, and sunlight then CO2 is a limiting factor and there’s no economical cure for it as it can’t be added to the air like fertilizer and water can be added to the soil.
Gentlemen,
An excellent article with excellent commentary.
More like this please.
Hmmm, I hadn’t realized that this solar minimum had already been named the “Eddy Minimum”! Nice job, Anthony and Leif!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Eddy
tallbloke says:
May 12, 2011 at 2:39 pm
We could squeak by in a Dalton, but any more than that will find a US Agriculture Market unprepared.
berniel says:
May 12, 2011 at 2:32 pm
The warning given in that passage was not intended to punish, but to forewarn to be prepared. So, start preparing.
The “Eddy Minimum” ??
Good post, David. It’s time to prepare. Let the grasshopper do as the grasshopper will, and let the ants show the way.
vboring says:
May 12, 2011 at 3:00 pm