The Impact of Climate Change on the American Midwest May Not be Drought Conditions

Climate change is impacting the United States in many ways. But will it cause the U.S. Midwest to become drier or wetter during the summer growing season? Many say that drought will be a huge issue, but scientists have found that this may not be the case.

As climate change continues, it has the potential to drastically impact the water cycle in farming areas, such as the Midwest. Already, studies have investigated the response of surface air temperature and precipitation to climate change across the Midwest and United States. Few studies, though, have looked at the response of soil moisture to climate change.

The researchers ran multiple regional climate model experiments in order to project summertimes changes in the water cycle over a representative area of the Midwest. Some of their experiments predicted drier soil conditions over the Midwest, while others predicted wetter soil conditions.

So why was there this difference? It largely depended on which global climate model that the researchers used. In order resolve the contradictory predictions, the researchers also assessed an observational dataset of the water budget in Illinois. However, the results showed no significant trends in soil moisture, precipitation, streamflow, groundwater level or surface air temperature over a recent 26-year period.

"Based on our analysis of model simulations and regional observations, we conclude that climate change impacts on the water cycle of the Midwestern United States remain uncertain," said Jonathan Winter, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Our findings also suggest that while increases in surface air temperatures have been insignificant so far, adaptation to projected increases in temperature should be given priority as the signal is robust and could have large impacts on crop yields. Our findings highlight the need for expanded observations of soil moisture and improved simulations of soil moisture by climate models."

The findings are published in the journal Water Resources Research.

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