5 Comments
Nov 5Liked by Michael Roberts

I'm not an atmospheric scientist but I have heard that the central corn belt has mostly stable rainfall totals each year due to two fairly independent sources of moisture. One is the jet stream that goes west to east across the continent, bringing moisture. The second is moisture coming up as remnants of hurricanes and tropical storms that originate in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Oct 9Liked by Michael Roberts

Great post, glad to see you are restarting your blogging g efforts

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Very nice post, and thanks for the shoutout to our substack. One point where I might disagree: I think that there is an emerging consensus that the cooling is due to agricultural activity:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075604

https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2825

Keep up the good work!

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author

Yeah, I linked to the second article and commented on it. I'm not super convineced by that evidence, especially after I had a student take a closer look. But I don't anticipate people will believe me over Huybers.

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I think you nailed the really important question: what's going to happen in the future. If the rest of the globe keeps warming, then eventually summertime temps in this region have to rise. Let's hope it doesn't cause an abrupt decrease in production.

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