Observational evidence of increased afternoon rainfall downwind of irrigated areas

P. Greve (), A. U. Schmitt, D. G. Miralles, S. McDermid, K. L. Findell, A. García-García and J. Peng
Additional contact information
P. Greve: Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
A. U. Schmitt: Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon
D. G. Miralles: Ghent University
S. McDermid: New York University
K. L. Findell: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
A. García-García: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ
J. Peng: Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research–UFZ

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Irrigation plays a vital role in addressing the growing food demand of an increasing global population. It represents one of the most critical and direct human interventions on the coupled water and energy cycles. As irrigated farmland continues to expand, understanding the climate impact of extensive irrigation becomes increasingly important. Yet, the effect on rainfall patterns near irrigated areas remains unclear. Here, using two global, high-resolution, sub-daily precipitation datasets, we show that afternoon rain events occur more often 10 km to 50 km downwind and less often upwind of extensively irrigated land. However, we also find that the total amount of heavy afternoon rain downwind of irrigated areas is lower than upwind. Our results establish large-scale observational evidence of the local precipitation dynamics surrounding irrigated areas; these insights will help constrain the representation of these processes in next-generation climate and weather forecasting models and provide valuable insights for regional water management.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58729-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58729-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58729-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().