(Press-News.org) Irvine, Calif., Jan. 28, 2013 – Agricultural irrigation in California's Central Valley doubles the amount of water vapor pumped into the atmosphere, ratcheting up rainfall and powerful monsoons across the interior Southwest, according to a new study by UC Irvine scientists.
Moisture on the vast farm fields evaporates, is blown over the Sierra Nevada and dumps 15 percent more than average summer rain in numerous other states. Runoff to the Colorado River increases by 28 percent, and the Four Corners region experiences a 56 percent boost in runoff. While the additional water supply can be a good thing, the transport pattern also accelerates the severity of monsoons and other potentially destructive seasonal weather events.
"If we stop irrigating in the Valley, we'll see a decrease in stream flow in the Colorado River basin," said climate hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, senior author on the paper, which will be published online Tuesday, Jan. 29, in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The basin provides water for about 35 million people, including those in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix. But the extra water vapor also accelerates normal atmospheric circulation, he said, "firing up" the annual storm cycle and drawing in more water vapor from the Gulf of Mexico as well as the Central Valley.
When the additional waves of moisture bump into developing monsoons, Famiglietti said, "it's like throwing fuel on a fire."
He and colleague Min-Hui Lo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Center for Hydrologic Modeling who is now at National Taiwan University, painstakingly entered regional irrigation levels into global rainfall and weather models and traced the patterns.
"All percent differences in the paper are the differences between applying irrigation to the Central Valley and not applying it," Famiglietti said. "That's the point of the study – and the beauty of using computer models. You can isolate the phenomenon that you wish to explore, in this case, irrigation versus no irrigation."
Famiglietti's team plans to increase the scope of the work to track how major human water usage elsewhere in the world affects neighboring areas too. A better understanding of irrigation's impact on the changing climate and water availability could improve resource management in parched or flooded areas.
###About the University of California, Irvine:
Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with more than 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,400 staff. Orange County's second-largest employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $4.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu.
News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UCI faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.
Contact:
Janet Wilson
949-824-3969
janet.wilson@uci.edu
UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit http://today.uci.edu/resources/experts.php.
Central Valley irrigation intensifies rainfall, storms across the Southwest
UCI study finds that doubling of moisture in air has positive, negative effects
2013-01-28
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Safeguards needed for tissue donors
2013-01-28
Donors to biobanks – vast collections of human tissue samples that scientists hope will lead to new treatments for diseases – have a right to basic information about how their donations may be used, a Michigan State University ethicist argues in a new paper.
The idea behind biobanks is that a repository with hundreds of thousands of samples, each linked to medical records and other health information, can yield discoveries smaller data sets can't match. Once samples are collected, researchers in many fields can use the data repeatedly.
"More and larger biobanks are ...
New LGBT Health journal launching in 2013
2013-01-28
New Rochelle, NY, January 28, 2013—Over 4 million adults in the United States identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual and approximately 700,000 identify as transgender. An NIH-sponsored investigation by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that the health status and healthcare needs of this sizable population are poorly understood and likely inadequately met. A journal is urgently needed to support, promote, and address the unique healthcare needs of each population that comprises the LGBT community, in the United States and worldwide. LGBT Health, a new peer-reviewed ...
Best friends influence when teenagers have first drink
2013-01-28
Chances are the only thing you remember about your first swig of alcohol is how bad the stuff tasted. What you didn't know is the person who gave you that first drink and when you had it says a lot about your predisposition to imbibe later in life.
A national study by a University of Iowa-led team has found that adolescents who get their first drink from a friend are more likely to drink sooner in life, which past studies show makes them more prone to abusing alcohol when they get older. The finding is designed to help specialists predict when adolescents are likely to ...
Patients' own skin cells are transformed into heart cells to create 'disease in a dish'
2013-01-28
LA JOLLA, Calif., January 27, 2013 – Most patients with an inherited heart condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) don't know they have a problem until they're in their early 20s. The lack of symptoms at younger ages makes it very difficult for researchers to study how ARVD/C evolves or to develop treatments. A new stem cell-based technology created by 2012 Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., helps solve this problem. With this technology, researchers can generate heart muscle cells from a patient's own skin cells. ...
Demagnetization by rapid spin transport
2013-01-28
For purposes of their research, the scientists irradiated two separate layered systems with ultrashort laser pulses on the order of just one hundred femtoseconds (10-15 s). One sample consisted essentially of a single thin layer of ferromagnetic nickel. By contrast, a second sample of this same nickel material was coated with a non-magnetic layer of gold. Only a mere 30 nanometers (10-9 m) thick, the gold layer swallowed up the lion's share of the laser light so that barely any light ended up reaching the nickel layer. In spite of this, the nickel layer's magnetization ...
Accelerating neutral atoms on a table top
2013-01-28
Charged particle accelerators have become crucially important to modern day life, be it in health care for cancer treatment or for answering important fundamental scientific questions like the existence of the HIGGS boson, the so called 'God particle'. In a simple picture, charged particles like electrons and protons are accelerated between two end plates across which an electrical voltage is applied. High energies need high voltages (millions and billions of volts) and long acceleration paths in giant sized machines – for instance the trillion volt machine called the 'large ...
Rice technique points toward 2-D devices
2013-01-28
HOUSTON – (Jan. 28, 2013) – Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator.
The materials at play – graphene and hexagonal boron nitride – have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions.
Rice introduced a technique to stitch the identically structured materials together nearly three years ago. Since then, the idea has received a lot of attention from researchers interested ...
Cities affect temperatures for thousands of miles
2013-01-28
BOULDER – Even if you live more than 1,000 miles from the nearest large city, it could be affecting your weather.
In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study in Nature Climate Change.
The extra "waste heat" generated from ...
Stem cells aid recovery from stroke
2013-01-28
Stem cells from bone marrow or fat improve recovery after stroke in rats, finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy. Treatment with stem cells improved the amount of brain and nerve repair and the ability of the animals to complete behavioural tasks.
Stem cell therapy holds promise for patients but there are many questions which need to be answered, regarding treatment protocols and which cell types to use. This research attempts to address some of these questions.
Rats were treated intravenously with stem cells or ...
Measuring the consequence of forest fires on public health
2013-01-28
Pollution from forest fires is impacting the health of people with asthma and other chronic obstructive lung diseases, finds a study in Biomed Central's open access journal Environmental Health. This study uses data from pharmacies and dispensaries to measure the increase in drugs needed to alleviate symptoms associated with pollution.
Forest fires burn nearly 1000 km2 of trees in British Columbia every year. The Ministry of Environment keeps a close watch on levels of particulate matter in the air caused by these fires but it is harder to measure the impact of this ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
New perspective highlights urgent need for US physician strike regulations
An eye-opening year of extreme weather and climate
Scientists engineer substrates hostile to bacteria but friendly to cells
New tablet shows promise for the control and elimination of intestinal worms
Project to redesign clinical trials for neurologic conditions for underserved populations funded with $2.9M grant to UTHealth Houston
Depression – discovering faster which treatment will work best for which individual
Breakthrough study reveals unexpected cause of winter ozone pollution
nTIDE January 2025 Jobs Report: Encouraging signs in disability employment: A slow but positive trajectory
Generative AI: Uncovering its environmental and social costs
Lower access to air conditioning may increase need for emergency care for wildfire smoke exposure
Dangerous bacterial biofilms have a natural enemy
Food study launched examining bone health of women 60 years and older
CDC awards $1.25M to engineers retooling mine production and safety
Using AI to uncover hospital patients’ long COVID care needs
$1.9M NIH grant will allow researchers to explore how copper kills bacteria
New fossil discovery sheds light on the early evolution of animal nervous systems
A battle of rafts: How molecular dynamics in CAR T cells explain their cancer-killing behavior
Study shows how plant roots access deeper soils in search of water
Study reveals cost differences between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare patients in cancer drugs
‘What is that?’ UCalgary scientists explain white patch that appears near northern lights
How many children use Tik Tok against the rules? Most, study finds
Scientists find out why aphasia patients lose the ability to talk about the past and future
Tickling the nerves: Why crime content is popular
Intelligent fight: AI enhances cervical cancer detection
Breakthrough study reveals the secrets behind cordierite’s anomalous thermal expansion
Patient-reported influence of sociopolitical issues on post-Dobbs vasectomy decisions
Radon exposure and gestational diabetes
EMBARGOED UNTIL 1600 GMT, FRIDAY 10 JANUARY 2025: Northumbria space physicist honoured by Royal Astronomical Society
Medicare rules may reduce prescription steering
Red light linked to lowered risk of blood clots
[Press-News.org] Central Valley irrigation intensifies rainfall, storms across the SouthwestUCI study finds that doubling of moisture in air has positive, negative effects