Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Warmer winters are now a bad thing…
Winter crops may cause unintended warming, study says
A new study shows that fields with crop cover showed significantly warmer winter temperatures than fields with no cover or just short stubble.
Author: Cory Reppenhagen
Published: 11:02 AM MST January 5, 2019
Updated: 6:54 PM MST January 5, 2019Farmers grow crops or leave dying vegetation in their fields over the winter. A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, shows they may be causing unintended climate warming.
“When they stick out above the snow, they can warm winter temperatures,” Danica Lombardozzi, a plant ecophysiologist with NCAR, said.
Lombardozzi headed this new study that showed warming caused by crop cover absorbing high amounts of sunlight. She used computer modeling to find that fields with crop cover showed significantly warmer winter temperatures than fields with no cover or just short stubble.
“On average, that increased air temperature by 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit or 3 degrees Celsius. A significant temperature rise,” Lombardozzi said.
…
The abstract of the study;
Cover Crops May Cause Winter Warming in Snow‐Covered Regions
D. L. Lombardozzi G. B. Bonan W. Wieder A. S. Grandy C. Morris D. L. Lawrence
First published: 12 September 2018Cover crops, grown between cash crops when soil is fallow, are a management strategy that may help mitigate climate change. The biogeochemical effects of cover crops are well documented, as they provide numerous localized benefits to farmers. We test potential biogeophysical climate impacts of idealized cover crop scenarios by assuming that cover crops are planted offseason in all crop regions throughout North America. Our results suggest that planting cover crops increases wintertime temperature up to 3 °C in central North America by decreasing albedo in regions with variable snowpack. Cover crops with higher leaf area indices increase temperature more by decreasing broadband albedo, while decreasing cover crop height helped to mitigate the temperature increase as the shorter height was more frequently buried by snow. Thus, climate mitigation potential must consider the biogeophysical impacts of planting cover crops, and varietal selection can minimize winter warming.
Plain Language Summary
Planting cover crops is an agricultural management technique in which crops are grown in between cash crop seasons when the soil would otherwise be fallow. Cover crops provide many local benefits to farmers and can increase carbon storage in soils. In this study, we test how planting cover crops in all agricultural regions in North America can change wintertime temperatures. Model simulations suggest that cover crops can warm winter temperatures up to 3 °C in regions with variable winter snowpack, such as central North America. Planting cover crop varieties that are less leafy or get buried under the variable snowpack can help to minimize winter warming. Our study suggests that the climate mitigation potential of cover crops may be offset in these regions if cover crop varieties are not carefully selected.
Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018GL079000
My question – why didn’t someone try to get some field measurements? I mean you can understand in some cases it would be difficult to set up a field study, but in this case taking field measurements would have been trivial; ask farmers for their temperature data. A polite request to farmers interested in the study not to plant some of their monitored fields with winter cover crops would have completely avoided the need to rely on models.
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Yet where is the concern about runnoff and water quality? Having winter crops helps stabilize the soil and uptake nutrients that would otherwise find itself polluting our nation’s waters. Water quality and conservation are much more important than some “study”.
They forgot to include something in this model, reality.
Why would someone do a computer-game-only study on something so stupendously easy to perform field trial verifications of?!!! I really don’t understand why this was accepted for publication – where’s the verification. Do reviewers not even reading these reports anymore?
They would get their hands dirty. Might get mud on their shoes. Migth actually find out what reality is like.
See my comment above about Plato and Aristotle.
WOW! Amazing discovery! Higher albedos reduce energy absorption and lower albedos increases absorption.
Perhaps their next step will submit a plan to blanket the winter hemisphere with fresh snow cover daily so as to reduce global warming! I see snow making machines to be the next big investment!
(sarc)
Basically, it comes down to this….the environmental, leftist view is that anything humans do is bad for the environment and must be eliminated. The best thing to do, therefore, is drastically reduce the population. I would propose that the environmentalists put their rhetoric into action and eliminate themselves first.
Do you know, it’s never themselves that they see as being in need of eliminating, it’s everyone else.
So now denuded ground is a good thing?
Sheep are good?
Sheep are necessary?
To save the planet?
Some argue that Solar Photovoltaic Panels also contribute to Climate Change: https://weather.com/science/environment/news/solar-energy-contributes-climate-change-study
The greenies just can’t get a break.
Know what else reduces albedo, and “exacerbates global warming”? Trees, especially evergreens. Sorry kiddos, no more christmas trees – they contribute to “global warming”, and so are evil. And plastic ones are made from evil oil, so none of them either. And don’t get me started on how evil Santa is.
Uh ohs, clearing roads, parking lots and driveways of snow also “exacerbates global warming” – twice: first because of all the nasty “carbon pollution” produced by snow clearing operations and second, from the reduced albedo. Maybe we should go back to rolling the snow instead, and putting metal tracks on our cars.
Probably trivial but interesting. If a field growing crops is warmer than snow covered soil it may be due to absorbed energy (albedo change) but it may also be at least in part due to the actions of the crop itself. Some plants – especially those growing in snowy regions actively control their temperature by releasing energy. I know homeothermic plants sounds ridiculous, and of course its not at the level achieved by mammals but it is real. It was initially discovered by finding plants in snow covered fields with a ring around the plant which was clear of snow. That prompted further investigation which showed the phenomenon.
We must stop all agriculture immediatley, before it kills us all.
Following on from my previous comment that the plants themselves may be raising the temperature by releasing heat, (rather than just a change in albedo) look up thermogenic plants. Apparently the Voodoo lily (amorphophallus) can raise its temperature by up to 15C above the ambient! Skunk cabbages do pretty well too.
All plants of course practice thermal regulation by controlling water evaporation from their leaves (compare well watered hydrangeas versus those with very limited water availability on a hot day). Its a significant reason why trees can lower the temperature of their environment on a hot day. Thermogenesis however refers to the opposite where the plant maintains itself at a temperature higher than ambient.
Straight to the Computer Models(tm).
My current belief is that the sole purpose higher education in our current generations is to stop unemployable people from cluttering the job market.
Studies like this to little to convince me otherwise.
What this kook is claiming to model is that land with normal plants growing cause warming during the winter. Don’t any of these alleged researchers think? Or at least visit field sites to observe the null condition?
Farming has zero to do with the claim, except that farmers do strip vegetation during harvest, while leaving plant residues to improve the soil.
Defund this quack!
And the net result on the World Climate of all winter cover crops everywhere is around 1/10th of 1/100th of 1/1000th … in effect 0 (zero).
An interesting effect, to be sure, locally, but not alarming.
Idiotic, innacurate article.
Inns detract from accuracy.
paywalled to protect?? themselves from ridicule, while keeping funding
this mob is so stupid they aren’t worth feeding, and i hope theyre not breeding more like em
This article is based on conflation and cherry picking. Plus appealing to emotion and ignorance rather than science.
First, the idea that one’s personal comfort via a warm winter is bad for the climate is the ridiculous appeal of this post. But is that even the premise of the post? What else can one conclude? It isn’t specified! Therefore the article is based on extremely poor communication, poor or absent analysis of the science behind the investigation covered, and is a total advertisement and propaganda D-word people ( charitably called Skeptics here because they can’t face facts) who NEVER get up off their couches and do any science.
Assumptions like “warmer winter good, colder winter bad” totally personal, and if you spent 10 seconds thinking about it, totally localized. For people living close to the tropics or near deserts, warmer winters can actually be more deadly. In some places, Winters are the only times crops can be grown. Or outdoor activities can be safely done.
Also warmer winters also mean, by extension, because overall temperatures are going up, that summers are also warmer. warmer Summers can destroy crops in areas where higher temperatures are deadly or prevent growth or cause drought. So there’s a whole lot of narrow-mindedness, lack of science and outright stupidity with the entire premise of this article. Its premise is absent except by vague inference, there is no scientific analysis involved, there’s not even logical analysis about potential consequences of warmer winters!
The conflation amounts to equating climate change with local weather.
The cherry picking is picking one tiny study out of the vast data and evidence for global warming, and assuming one could refute ALL global warming evidence based on a localized trend, which looks only like one contributor of many to global warming.
That is NOT scientific. The author clearly shows no respect for science, and couldn’t be a legitimate respected scientist because she’s unwilling to do the work, and is ignorantly appealing to your emotions, not analytical abilities–those who are skeptical mainly because they are unable to actually DO climate science and grasp the far bigger picture and evidence involved.
Either she’s not smart enough to understand the science of global warming, or she knows you’re not smart enough to understand it. Therefore the intent is either based on ignorance or pure evil– to make you even more ignorant so that you oppose mainstream science which is informing us how to save Humanity from a trend we ourselves have created. The intent is to prejudice you against something you clearly, by dint of your comments, cannot understand and she evidently fails to understand or wants to dupe you about.
The dangers of climate change have nothing to do with one’s personal comfort–“warm Winters are now a bad thing” –until you actually live on a seashore where the ocean height rises 3 to 10 ft.
Until you live in Japan and the entire base of your main food source, fishing, is completely wiped out. Because of a catastrophic great dying of species – mass extinction event – due to warming so speedily that species cannot possibly cope with the rapid changes.
Yeah, wiping out your main food source is kind of a bad thing. Yeah, destroying homes and all the businesses your City built on the beach is kind of a bad thing. Yeah, when an ocean covers an island that’s your home, that’s kind of a bad thing.
Yeah, when a 7 degree rise in AVERAGE temperatures leads to occasional 20 degrees higher swings that kill crops you depend on to live, and older people and babies die of heatstroke, that’s kind of a bad thing.
Not kind of, it actually IS A BAD THING.
The main issues with climate change have NOTHING to do with apparently simplistic views like:
“Hey! Look how nice and warm it’s going to get! Climate change is good! WHEEEE! Extra summer, kids!”
“Those dumb-dum scientists, they don’t even care how much more ice cream we can eat and swimming we can do now! Ya nattering nabobs of negativism!”
The issues include how rapidly the changes are happening, how few species will be able to cope, how the rising acidification of the ocean may well destroy most species within 50 years because of a mass extinction event, how weather overall changes including getting worse and less predictable, and other ill effects that the writer or original poster completely fails to grasp or mention.
Those who do the Science of global warming understand it’s complex. They work with other scientists to grasp the big picture. Almost everyone posting and commenting here fails by picking out that one tree in the forest, shouting,
“Ooh, THAT tree doesn’t match the others! Proved you wrong!” and totally fails to see the big picture.
Of course, it’s obvious that most here are unable to realize that you don’t see the big picture (self reflection failure), because most of you aren’t smart enough to notice there IS a big picture, that you’re not smart enough to understand all the parts you keep looking at separately and how they interact with the big picture, and that you keep repeating this ignorant, unintelligent pattern WITHOUT LEARNING anything.
As Patrick, the mentally challenged starfish in SpongeBob says,
“Stupid people are always blissfully unaware of just how stupid they really are. [drool…..]”
So keep posting: hold up your plastic streamers in the wind and breathe people, breathe.
That’s what most of your comments here are worth– on the most popular, NOT the most scientific website on global warming.
You truly want to criticize climate science in a valid SCIENTIFIC way, get the climate science degree, do the work, put in the years of study required.
Stop being lazy armchair critics, prove how smart you are. Then you might not look like such an idiot.
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A cover crop actively growing over winter will be using energy to capture carbon dioxide to build leaves and roots, and some of that carbon flow in the roots will be stored in the soil long term via the glomalin pathway. Granted, in the middle of winter, not much of this will be happening, but each side of that period, it will. As much of the atmospheric CO2 rise has come from soil cultivation, and as cover cropping tends in the opposite direction, it would seem to be a good thing. There is also the benefit in protecting soil against erosion.