Cory Bohlander removes excess debris from the head of his combine before moving on to another field. Dry conditions in the Madison County area over the past two weeks have allowed Bohlander and his assistants to be in the fields daily.
ELWOOD — When Hurricane Ian plowed into the west coast of Florida on Sept. 26, it had intensified from a tropical storm with top sustained winds of 45 mph to a near-Category 5 monster packing winds of nearly 150 mph — all in a matter of four days.
Within that window, according to meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center, Ian had compressed two days’ worth of normal intensification into less than 36 hours.
Climatologists have long believed that ocean waters warmed by Earth’s changing climate are fueling bigger, more severe and more frequent storms such as Ian. They are less united in their conclusions about what that could mean — in both the short term and for decades to come — for weather-dependent industries like agriculture in the Midwest.
“Sometimes it can be beneficial to have (hurricane) remnants come up this way, or sometimes they can be not so beneficial — it just depends on how strong it is and what time of year it is,” said Cory Bohlander, who with his uncle farms about 750 acres in and around Elwood.
“You get into October, we don’t want that, but in August or September, it’s not always a bad thing.”
Regardless of when hurricane remnants make their way north, weather researchers are finding that, in addition to retaining more of their power as they move inland, the storms are more often stalling, thus creating more rainfall. The repercussions for many farmers — who rely on precise calculations of
soil composition, temperature and other factors when purchasing fertilizer — could be substantial.
“We get a lot of these localized events that are dropping 5 to 10 inches of rain at a time, and it instantly floods their fields,” said Micah Mitchell, a trained storm spotter who runs Madison County Weather Updates, a local weather forecasting and tracking website.
“It’s almost like our seasons are sliding a little bit later in the year. If you have to plant (crops) late and then suddenly get a bunch of rain in the fall, it can hurt them.”
Farmers and climatologists alike are noticing a trend toward more sporadic, yet more extreme, rainfall events. Bohlander recalled a drenching, all-day downpour that moved through Madison County in July and dumped from six to nine inches of rain in most areas in less than 24 hours.
“I got 8½ inches of rain at my house in one day,” he said. “I’ve never seen a rainfall like that before. I always thought an 8½-inch rain was a heavy rainfall over the period of a week, let alone one day.”
Bohlander said his crop yields have risen over the last few years, so he’s hesitant to tie the extreme weather to adverse effects on crops. If anything, he noted, the extremes make the logistics of planting and harvesting more complicated.
“I’m not sure that the weather has had a negative impact on our production,” he said, “but it’s made it more difficult to get our work done.”
THE PRECIPITATION PROBLEM
The Earth’s climate is warming and, from a meteorological perspective, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which inevitably leads to more frequent substantial rainfall events. But the increase in severe weather events — tornadoes in November and December or late-April cold snaps, for example — also traces back to more moisture being generated, coupled with the atmosphere’s inability to easily rid itself of that moisture.
“Probably the most frequent question people ask me is, ‘Why are we seeing this crazy weather?’” said Sam Lashley, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Indianapolis.
“‘Why aren’t the winters as cold and snowy as they were when I was a kid? Why are we seeing severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in December? We never used to see that.’
“The answer is a warming atmosphere. It’s happening, and it’s just all because the atmosphere can hold more moisture so we can get more rainfall in a very short period of time.”
EVEN THE COLD IS WARMER
There is concern, however, that in addition to supercharging more intense weather events, warming temperatures might damage or even destroy crops that are sensitive to small changes in soil moisture.
“For those crops, it could be tough due to (conditions) being too dry and then too wet,” said Justin Maxwell, an associate professor of geography at Indiana University who researches weather and climate.
“We are losing that happy medium. We may not see overall changes in the amount of rainfall we get here in Indiana, but how that rainfall falls is already changing.”
Maxwell noted that some common perceptions of climate change — blazing temperatures, drought conditions, rising ocean waters — might not necessarily be the main culprits behind potentially lower crop yields in the future.
He points to data showing that, in addition to overall average temperatures creeping up, average nighttime lows — especially in fall and winter — are also rising.
“This could have an impact especially on fruit, which depends more on a wide range of daily temperatures to produce sweet fruits,” Maxwell said.
The warmer lows may also prove detrimental to a built-in system of protection offered by the ecosystem, according to Mitchell, the storm spotter.
“The big problem with that is that it doesn’t kill off a lot of insects and different things that wreak havoc in the fields,” Mitchell said. “They don’t really get killed off because there’s not enough time (with colder temperatures) to reduce their population or their growth.”
Many farmers worry that the wild fluctuations in both temperature and precipitation throughout the year may increase crop yield volatility.
“There could be (economic fallout) if these storms become more frequent,” Bohlander noted.
Another complicating factor, according to Maxwell, is that if warmer temperatures continue to lengthen growing seasons, overall demand for water will likely increase, which would potentially overtax water supplies in drier areas.
“If we’re not seeing increases in precipitation but we are seeing longer growing seasons, that will mean plants will need water for longer,” he said. “That would mean a drying trend in the future.”
© 2024 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.