Climatologists seek to predict changes

More dry seasons could change the type of crops farmers plant.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON -- Last week's heat wave may have felt like something Midwesterners had never experienced before. But scientists are confident they'll get more chances to experience it again as climate change encourages more extreme weather.
Higher temperatures and more turbulent weather will affect everything in the Midwest -- from what trees dot the landscape to what wildlife roams the region to what crops farmers raise to how cities allocate water.
Weather unpredictability would make dry years more common and wet years less effective for crop-growing. The result could be more reliance on crops such as dryland wheat and cotton and less reliance on corn and other rain-intensive crops.
But because the variables in the Midwest haven't been explored as deeply as on the more heavily populated coasts, the overall impact of global warming on Midwestern agriculture remains unclear, said Chuck Rice, a Kansas State University agronomist.
"In the middle part of the country, the [research] models aren't as good," he said.
While heat waves come and go, a gradual increase in Earth's atmospheric greenhouse gases is expected to make global weather more volatile over the next century, giving the Midwest more extremes like last week's 110-degree days.
The trend toward more severe weather could change the Midwest significantly in upcoming decades. And though government response has been quiet so far, those who study global warming say citizens and governments need to wake up to the problem now.
"We don't know exactly what's going to happen," said Randy Rogers, a state of Kansas fish and game biologist, "but the thing we can say with the greatest of confidence is, it's not going to be good."
Slowly accepted
Climate change created by global warming has concerned scientists for the past 20 years. Public attention to it has risen and fallen, often depending on the weather.
After years of bitter dispute over whether the world really is getting warmer, the scientific consensus is that it is. While some disagreement continues over how much of the warming comes from human activity and how much comes from natural climate trends, most scientists now agree that humans contribute significantly to global warming.
That has put pressure on governments to come up with ways to deal with global warming before climate change is irreversible, a point that could come within 10 years.
Many global concerns, such as changing wind patterns or rising sea levels, aren't likely in the landlocked Midwest.
But that doesn't mean the Midwest won't change.
Higher temperatures mean more energy in the atmosphere. More energy means more turbulence. More turbulence means greater extremes, more heat waves, more snowstorms, more thunderstorms.
More tornadoes.
New water and weather patterns also will change Midwestern agriculture, both in what is grown and what consumers might pay in the store.