Irrigation Exerts Dramatic Effects on Local Climate in Central Asia: Study

What is it about?

Central Asia is highly agrarian, and most of the croplands rely on irrigation due to sparce precipitation. How irrigation affects the regional climate in Central Asia is still unclear so far.To answer this question, Wu et al. modified the irrigation module in the regional climate model, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. They carried out abundant numeric simulations to assess the effects of irrigation on the local surface air temperature, precipitation, and surface heat fluxes.

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Photo by Jordan McQueen on Unsplash

Photo by Jordan McQueen on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our used irrigation scheme not only considered the influences of climatic conditions but also only irrigated in subgrid-scale. Contribution of soil evaporation and transpiration to irrigation-induced increases in latent heat flux was roughly equal in Central Asia. Multiple sensitivity experiments were conducted to further confirm the conclusion that irrigation increased precipitation in mountainous areas.