Barb Boustead remembers learning about corn sweat when she moved to Nebraska about 20 years ago to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and suddenly found herself in a sea of corn. The term for the late-summer rise in humidity attributable to the cooling of corn plants was “something the locals knew very well,” recalls Boustead, a meteorologist and climatologist.
But that typical Midwestern summer weather could get even stickier resulting from climate change and the rise of business agriculture. Climate change is causing higher temperatures and warmer nights and allowing the atmosphere to carry more moisture. It has also modified growing conditions, allowing farmers to grow corn farther north and increasing the whole amount of corn grown within the United States.
Farmers are also growing more acres of corn, partly to fulfill demand for ethanol. based on the USDA’s Economic Research Service. This signifies that more plants need to work harder to remain cool. They pump out moisture that steaming misery like this that covers large parts of the USA this week.
This is especially evident within the Midwest, where lots of corn is grown and reaches the evapotranspiration stage at concerning the same time. “So there is a real upswing there that is clearly noticeable,” says Boustead.
Dennis Todey, who runs the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub, which helps farmers adapt to climate change, said corn’s evapotranspiration — the method by which water is taken up from the soil, used for its own needs after which released into the air as vapor — occurs in July, not August.
He said soybeans are likely to produce more steam than corn in August.
Todey said more studies are needed to know how climate change affects maize mash, with rainfall levels, crop variety and farming practices all potentially playing a job.
But for Lew Ziska, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University who has studied the results of climate change on crops, warmer conditions mean more transpiration. When asked if more corn sweat is an effect of climate change, he simply said, “Yes.”
He also noted that demand for corn to provide ethanol is increasing. Over 40% of the corn grown within the U.S. is processed into biofuels which can be eventually consumed by cars and sometimes even airplanes. Global ethanol production has been steadily increasing, except a dip through the COVID-19 pandemic, based on Data from the Renewable Fuels Association.
Ethanol consumption also contributes to emissions that warm the planet.
“It should come as no surprise that it has become warmer. And as the heat increases, plants lose more water,” said Ziska.
