Empirical evidence for a recent slowdown in irrigation-induced cooling.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the influence of past land use changes on climate is needed to improve regional projections of future climate change and inform debates about the tradeoffs associated with land use decisions. The effects of rapid expansion of irrigated area in the 20th century has remained unclear relative to other land use changes, such as urbanization, that affected a similar total land area. Using spatial and temporal variations in temperature and irrigation extent observed in California, we show that irrigation expansion has had a large cooling effect on summertime average daily daytime temperatures (-0.14 degrees C to -0.25 degrees C per decade), which corresponds to an estimated cooling of -1.8 degrees C to -3.2 degrees C since the introduction of irrigation practices. Irrigation has ne

SUBMITTER: Bonfils C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1959424 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature