Identification

Title

The decline in summer fallow in the northern Great Plains cooled near-surface climate but had minimal impacts on precipitation

Abstract

Land management can moderate or intensify the impacts of a warming atmosphere. Since the early 1980s, nearly 116,000 km2 of cropland that was once held in fallow during the summer is now planted in the northern North American Great Plains. To simulate the impacts of this substantial land cover change on regional climate processes, convection-permitting model experiments using the Weather Research and Forecasting model were performed to simulate modern and historical amounts of summer fallow. The control simulation was extensively validated using multiple observational data products as well as eddy covariance tower observations. Results of these simulations show that the transition from summer fallow to modern land cover led to similar to 1.5 degrees C cooler temperatures and decreased vapor pressure deficit by similar to 0.15 kPa during the growing season across the study region, which is consistent with observed cooling trends. The cooler and wetter land surface with vegetation led to a shallower planetary boundary layer and lower lifted condensation level, creating conditions more conducive to convective cloud formation and precipitation. Our model simulations however show little widespread evidence of land surface changes effects on precipitation. The observed precipitation increase in this region is more likely related to increased moisture transport by way of the Great Plains Low Level Jet as revealed by the ERA5 reanalysis. Our results demonstrate that land cover change is consistent with observed regional cooling in the northern North American Great Plains but changes in precipitation cannot be explained by land management alone.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7w95fdz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2024-06-28T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact