Irrigation enhances local warming with greater nocturnal warming effects than daytime cooling effects

To meet the growing demand for food, land is being managed to be more productive using agricultural intensification practices, such as the use of irrigation. Understanding the specific environmental impacts of irrigation is a critical part of using it as a sustainable way to provide food security. H...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2018-02, Vol.13 (2), p.24005
Main Authors: Chen, Xing, Jeong, Su-Jong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural practices
Climate change
Climate effects
Climate models
Cooling
Cooling effects
Daytime
Dry season
Energy storage
Environmental impact
Food
Food security
Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases
Irrigated areas
Irrigation
Irrigation effects
Night
Nighttime
North China Plain
regional climate change
Surface temperature
warming
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Summary:To meet the growing demand for food, land is being managed to be more productive using agricultural intensification practices, such as the use of irrigation. Understanding the specific environmental impacts of irrigation is a critical part of using it as a sustainable way to provide food security. However, our knowledge of irrigation effects on climate is still limited to daytime effects. This is a critical issue to define the effects of irrigation on warming related to greenhouse gases (GHGs). This study shows that irrigation led to an increasing temperature (0.002 °C year−1) by enhancing nighttime warming (0.009 °C year−1) more than daytime cooling (−0.007 °C year−1) during the dry season from 1961-2004 over the North China Plain (NCP), which is one of largest irrigated areas in the world. By implementing irrigation processes in regional climate model simulations, the consistent warming effect of irrigation on nighttime temperatures over the NCP was shown to match observations. The intensive nocturnal warming is attributed to energy storage in the wetter soil during the daytime, which contributed to the nighttime surface warming. Our results suggest that irrigation could locally amplify the warming related to GHGs, and this effect should be taken into account in future climate change projections.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/aa9dea