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Ah, yes, it’s that time of late August in the Midwest: it’s a time for lakeside popsicles, country fairs, and, of course, extremely humid weather made all the more unbearable by corn sweats.
Corn sweat. This is great stuff! People are talking about it.
This term refers to the moisture that corn fields release on hot, sunny days. Like all other plants, corn transpires – that is, it absorbs water from the ground and releases it into the air to keep it cool and distribute nutrients. When water evaporates from the soil, it also enters the air. This process, along with transpiration, is called evapotranspiration.
So, whether it’s the Amazon rainforest or Iowa, when you find a lot of plants densely packed into one place, when it’s especially hot and sunny, the humidity can rise dramatically, making the air feel oppressive.
Here’s what happened this week: The late summer heat wave brought Record Parts of the Midwest are seeing near-record temperatures, and that’s where there are big corn fields. With plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the 90s, the corn is sweating and it’s extremely uncomfortable.
It’s not that corn sweats more than other plants – the average acre of land releases about 100 percent more water than the A big oak tree — but the Midwest has a lot of corn in late August. In Iowa, for example, more than two-thirds of the land is farmland, and corn is the main crop (followed by soybeans, which, by the way, also sweat).
“The increased heat and humidity from corn sweat can lead to more intense heat waves. Keeping people calm is a challenge and increased risk of heat-related illnesses,” Bruno Bassoa crop and agricultural scientist at Michigan State University.
Corn sweating is a completely natural process; it does not harm the crop. But when it causes humidity to spike, high levels of evapotranspiration can cause damage to people who work outdoors, vulnerable groups such as the elderly, or pregnantand those who cannot afford air conditioning.
Is corn sweat a growing concern?
One confusing thing to remember, Basso said, is that evapotranspiration tends to cool the surrounding air because the process absorbs heat. This is one reason why a forest or grassland often feels cooler than a parking lot on a hot day.
However, during extreme heat waves, Becoming more common As companies emit carbon dioxide into the air, “the landscape has changed,” Basso said.
“While evapotranspiration has a cooling effect, increased humidity counteracts this and makes heat waves feel more intense,” Basso told me. It also prevents temperatures from dropping at night, when things usually feel cooler, he added.
In 2020 studyResearchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics analyzed past summer heat waves in the Midwest and found that agricultural fields (much of which is corn) can increase the humidity of the air above them by up to 40 percent.
Then again, it’s not just Midwestern crops that release moisture, increase humidity and make summers nasty (I have firsthand experience; I grew up in Iowa.) The replacement of millions of acres of grassland with industrial farmland — mostly for raising livestock and producing ethanol — also produces a lot of moisture, Basso said.
But he added that there are some key differences between native ecosystems and industrialized farmland. “Native grasslands are diverse ecosystems with a variety of plant species, each with different root depths and water requirements, contributing to a balanced water cycle,” he told me. “In contrast, corn and soybean monocultures are uniform and can draw water from the soil more quickly.”
He said densely planted corn drains moisture from the soil, which could exacerbate the drought. More extreme In some parts of the country, although this is less of a concern in the Midwest, Expected The coming decades will be even wetter.
If you combine all of these factors, you’re looking at vast tracts of cornfields being used to feed cows, which can lead to wetter weather in the Midwest during heat waves and exacerbate other climate extremes.
Basically, corn sweat is just as disgusting as it sounds.
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