Abstract
Managing the land surface to increase albedo to offset regional warming has received less attention than managing the land surface to sequester carbon. We test whether increasing agricultural albedo can cool regional climate. We first used the Community Atmosphere Model (CAM 3.0) coupled to the Community Land Model (CLM 3.0) to assess the broad climatic effects of a hypothetical implementation of a strategy in which the albedo of cropland regions is increased using high albedo crops. Simulations indicate that planting brighter crops can decrease summertime maximum daily 2 m air temperature by 0.25°C per 0.01 increase in surface albedo at high latitudes (>30°). However, planting brighter crops at low latitudes (<30°) may have negative repercussions including warming the land surface and decreasing precipitation, because increasing the land surface albedo tends to preferentially decrease latent heat fluxes to the atmosphere, which decreases cloud cover and rainfall. We then test a possible method for increasing crop albedo by measuring the range of albedo within 16 isolines of soybeans that differ only with trichome color, orientation, and density but find that such modifications had only minor impacts on leaf albedo. Increasing agricultural albedo may cool high latitude regional climate, but increasing plant albedo sufficiently to offset potential future warming will require larger changes to plant albedo than are currently available.
Article PDF
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Angel R (2003) Feasibility of cooling the earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner lagrange point (L1). Proc Natl Acad Sci 103:17184–17189
Bala G, Caldeira K, Wickett M, Phillips TJ, Lobell DB, Delire C, Mirin A (2007) Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:9911 (vol 104, pg 6550, 2007)
Baldocchi DD, Verma SB, Rosenberg NJ, Blad BL, Garay A, Specht JE (1983) Leaf pubescence effects on the mass and energy exchange between soybean canopies and the atmosphere. Agron J 75:537–543
Betts R (2007) Implications of land ecosystem-atmosphere interactions for strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Tellus B 59:602–615
Breuer L, Eckhardt K, Frede HG (2003) Plant parameter values for models in temperate climates. Ecol Model 169:237–293
Brewer PG (2007) Evaluating a technological fix for climate. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:9915–9916
Collins WD, Bitz CM, Blackmon ML, Bonan GB, Bretherton CS, Carton JA, Chang P, Doney SC, Hack JJ, Henderson TB, Kiehl JT, Large WG, McKenna DS, Santer BD, Smith RD (2006) The community climate system model version 3 (CCSM3). J Climate 19:2122–2143
Crutzen PJ (2006) Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injections: a contribution to resolve a policy dilemma. Clim Change 77:211–219
Dickinson RE (1983) Land surface processes and climate surface albedos and energy-balance. Adv Geophys 25:305–353
Dorman JL, Sellers PJ (1989) A global climatology of albedo, roughness length and stomatal-resistance for atmospheric general-circulation models as represented by the simple biosphere model (Sib). J Appl Meteorol 28:833–855
Ehleringer JR, Bjorkman O (1978) Comparison of photosynthetic characteristics of encelia species possessing glabrous and pubescent leaves. Plant Physiol 62:185–190
Eller BM, Willi P (1977) Significance of leaf pubescence for absorption of global radiation by tussilago-farfara L’. Oecologia 29:179–187
Gates DM, Keegan HJ, Schleter JC, Weidner VR (1965) Spectral properties of plants. Appl Optics 4:11
Lobell DB, Burke MB, Tebaldi C, Mastrandrea MD, Falcon WP, Naylor RL (2008) Prioritizing climate change adaptation needs for food security in 2030. Science 319:607–610
Nielsen DC, Blad BL, Verma SB, Rosenberg NJ, Specht JE (1984) Influence of soybean pubescence type on radiation balance. Agron J 76:924–929
Randerson JT, Liu H, Flanner MG, Chambers SD, Jin Y, Hess PG, Pfister G, Mack MC, Treseder KK, Welp LR, Chapin FS, Harden JW, Goulden ML, Lyons E, Neff JC, Schuur EAG, Zender CS (2006) The impact of boreal forest fire on climate warming. Science 314:1130–1132
Ridgwell A, Singarayer JS, Hetherington AM, Valdes PJ (2009) Tackling regional climate change by leaf albedo bio-geoengineering. Curr Biol 19:146–150
Rosenzweig C, Parry ML (1994) Potential impact of climate-change on world food-supply. Nature 367:133–138
Wigley TML (2006) A combined mitigation/geoengineering approach to climate stabilization. Science 314:452–454
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic Supplementary Material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Doughty, C.E., Field, C.B. & McMillan, A.M.S. Can crop albedo be increased through the modification of leaf trichomes, and could this cool regional climate?. Climatic Change 104, 379–387 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9936-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9936-0