Inside Iowa State

January 14, 2005

A 'hole' in global warming

Scientists at Iowa State's Regional Climate Modeling Laboratory have discovered global warming might not be as severe in the central United States as in other parts of the country. Using a detailed regional climate model, they estimate there will be less summertime warming in a region centered on eastern Kansas than anywhere else in the United States.

The findings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, underscore the need to consider the impact of global warming on a region-by-region basis, said Gene Takle, professor of agronomy and geological and atmospheric sciences.

"The modeling showed that warming in the United States will be stronger in winter than summer and stronger at night than during the day. But we found what looked to us like a 'hole' in the daytime warming in summer, which was a surprise," said Zaitao Pan, who worked as a research associate with the project before taking a faculty position at Saint Louis University.

Agronomy professor Ray Arritt said this hole in the warming makes sense. "Our model tells us the future climate will have more rainfall and wetter soil, so more of the sun's energy goes into evaporating water than heating the air," he said. "Rainfall in the northern Great Plains already has increased by about 10 percent over the past few decades, which is consistent with our predictions."

Team members caution that independent evaluations are needed to confirm their findings and determine whether the hole might be a temporary phenomenon that will disappear as global warming becomes more severe in the latter half of the century.

The money game

Political scientist Robert Lowry is studying the financial influence of national political parties on local, state and national elections.

"There are a lot of house district seats where even incumbents raise very little money from their own districts," Lowry said. "And there is a surprising amount that raise no money whatsoever."

Lowry will study the 1998 and 2000 Congressional elections, using information from the Federal Election Commission to track the trail of money from the two major party committees.

"While the Federal Election Commission does not track donations to candidates from PACs (political action committees) or donations of less than $200, it does indicate who is donating large amounts of money and where those funds are coming from," Lowry said.

Increasingly, election funding comes from the two major national political parties, he said. Lowry also will study whether money from those organizations had an impact on close U.S. House and Senate races.

Scientists at Iowa State's Regional Climate Modeling Laboratory have discovered global warming might not be as severe in the central United States as in other parts of the country.