The Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) - Investigating the Impacts of Irrigation on Regional Weather
Abstract
The state of Nebraska has the highest acreage under irrigation within USA. In the vicinity of Lincoln, Nebraska, there is marked transition from irrigated to non-irrigated croplands. This contrasting landscape is a natural laboratory for studying the impacts of irrigation on land-atmosphere interactions which is suspected to have altered the regional climate in the Midwestern region. Numerical modeling studies suggest that irrigation impact cloud and precipitation through multiple process pathways which differ depending on the scale and organization of the precipitation systems. Land surface spatial heterogeneity in this region is also expected play a role, modulating mesoscale circulations and low level jet.
In order to investigate the varied processes through which irrigation impacts the regional weather, the Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) was conducted in this area during late May though the end of July, 2018. Two NCAR Earth Observations Laboratory (EOL) Integrated Sounding System (ISS) units were deployed to sample the evolution of the boundary layer over the irrigated and non-irrigated regions. Twelve EOL Integrated Surface Flux Stations were deployed to monitor differences in surface energy budget over the irrigated and non-irrigated regions of the study domain. Three Doppler on Wheels (DOWs) were deployed to establish a domain of dual Doppler observations that straddle the transition zone between the irrigated and non-irrigated regions. High, temporal resolution radiosonde observations were collected at both the DOW and ISS sites. A dense network of UAH Environmental Monitoring, Economical Sensor Hubs (EMESH) stations was used to acquire meteorology, soil moisture and soil temperature observations. In addition, NASA flew the L-band Goddard Radio Frequency Explorer (GREX) instrument during the second half of July 2018 period to obtain spatial heterogeneous and high-resolution soil moisture estimates over the domain. A variety of meteorological settings were sampled during the field experiment including clear conditions, cumulus cloud fields and passage of organized cumulus convective systems. The GRAINEX field experiment acquired a valuable data set for investigating land-atmosphere interactions and the talk will provide an overview of the field experiment, preliminary results and plans for integrated analysis.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H12B..08N
- Keywords:
-
- 3307 Boundary layer processes;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3322 Land/atmosphere interactions;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 1843 Land/atmosphere interactions;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1866 Soil moisture;
- HYDROLOGY