Students in Sam Ng’s Field Observation of Severe Weather class hit the road every spring to observe storm structures, like this mesocyclone in Imperial, Nebraska. Photo by Sam Ng via Metropolitan State University of DenverClick the link to access the article on the AMS Journals website (Daniel Whitesel, Rezaul Mahmood, Paul Flanagan, Chris Phillips, Roger A. Pielke Sr. , Udaysankar Nair, and Eric Rappin). Here’s the abstract:
April 25, 2025
Land-use land-cover change (LULCC) caused by irrigation impacts weather and climate. The Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) aims to understand the impacts of irrigated and nonirrigated land uses on the convective environment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first of this type of study that analyzed convective environments over irrigated and nonirrigated land uses during early and peak growing seasons under a variety of atmospheric conditions, using observed rawinsonde data from GRAINEX and convective diagnostic variables. These variables include CAPE, mixed-layer CAPE (MLCAPE), most unstable CAPE (MUCAPE), lifted index, total totals index, precipitable water (PWAT), 850-mb dewpoint depression (DD850mb; 1 mb = 1 hPa), and environmental lapse rates (ELRs). Rawinsonde observations were categorized by, for example, irrigated versus nonirrigated, morning versus afternoon, cloudy versus noncloudy day, and early [intensive observation period 1 (IOP1)] versus peak (IOP2) growing season (when irrigation also becomes widespread). Irrigated land use and irrigation impact many of these diagnostic variables. For example, it was found that CAPE and MUCAPE were higher over irrigated land use compared to nonirrigated land use for most categories. PWAT was found to be higher over irrigated land use, especially during clear days and peak growing season (IOP2) when irrigation is widespread. DD850mb was lower over irrigated areas and particularly during IOP2. We suggest that, regardless of background condition, LULCC driven by irrigation impacts convective environments and favors the development of convective storms.
© 2025 American Meteorological Society. This published article is licensed under the terms of the default AMS reuse license. For information regarding reuse of this content and general copyright information, consult the AMS Copyright Policy (www.ametsoc.org/PUBSReuseLicenses).Corresponding author: Rezaul Mahmood, rmahmood2@unl.edu