Agriculture's growing effects on rain
Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - 05:30
in Earth & Climate
(Phys.org) —Increased agricultural activity is a rain taker, not a rain maker, according to researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and their collaborators at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Texas. They fed observed land-use change data in a climate model and found the expansion of agriculture in the African Sahel region decreases summer rainfall through its impact on monsoon rains. The simulated decrease in summer rainfall reaches 10 percent over the Sahel, a region that is already stressed by water needs for human and ecological use. Their study offers new insight on how land-use change may affect regional rainfall.