Evidence of an Agricultural Heat Island in the Lower Mississippi River Floodplain

The Mississippi River floodplain in the states of Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana presents a readily discernible feature in weather satellite images. This floodplain appears in the spring and early summer as a daytime warm anomaly at infrared (IR) wavelengths and as a bright reflecti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 1994-06, Vol.75 (6), p.1019-1025
Main Authors: Raymond, William H., Rabin, Robert M., Wade, Gary S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Air temperature
Atmosphere
Climate
Climate models
Diurnal variations
Earth, ocean, space
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Floodplains
Geographic regions
Heat islands
Meteorology
Meteors
Other topics in atmospheric geophysics
Precipitation
Rivers
Surface temperature
Temperature
Temperature gradients
Urban heat islands
Vegetation
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Summary:The Mississippi River floodplain in the states of Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana presents a readily discernible feature in weather satellite images. This floodplain appears in the spring and early summer as a daytime warm anomaly at infrared (IR) wavelengths and as a bright reflective area at visible wavelengths. Remnants of this feature can occasionally be identified at nighttime in the IR satellite images. During June the normalized difference vegetation index identifies major contrasts between this intense agricultural region and the surrounding mixed-forest region. This distinction and the homogeneity of the floodplain, with its alluvial soil, contrast with the encircling region, creating an agricultural region containing heat island features. Thirty years of climatological surface station data for the month of June reveal that the surface air temperatures in the floodplain experience less diurnal variation than those in the surrounding regions. This is primarily because nighttime minimums are warmer in the Mississippi River floodplain.
ISSN:0003-0007
1520-0477
DOI:10.1175/1520-0477(1994)075<1019:EOAAHI>2.0.CO;2