LINCOLN- Intense irrigation in Nebraska is having a complex effect on the weather, researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln say.

UNL School of Natural Resources professor, Rezaul Mahmood said, "Irrigation impacts our weather, climate and well-being in many different ways.”

Scientists have been studying the impact of irrigation on weather for years because of irrigation’s importance to global food security and the need to understand how its increasing use might change the weather. Irrigated fields produce about 40% of the world’s food, and its use is growing.

The most noticeable, localized effect that irrigation has on the weather is to make an area more humid, Mahmood said. People sense that through muggier and more uncomfortable weather. That humidity also suppresses temperatures, so it’s harder for hot weather to generate records.

This type of research has led scientists to conclude that irrigation is changing wind patterns locally and affecting rainfall patterns over a large area.

Mahmood said irrigation weakens a type of afternoon wind that is important to cloud formation. It’s not clear, he said, how much impact the change has on clouds and storms.

“The bottom line is that when you change land use, that impacts the weather and climate of an area,” Mahmood said. “Planning and adaption, those are things we need to work on.”

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