Environment & Energy

Sweaty corn is making it even more humid
By MELINA WALLING
Updated 10:33 AM EDT, August 28, 2024

Barb Boustead remembers learning about corn sweat when she moved to Nebraska about 20 years ago to work for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and found herself plunked down in an ocean of corn. The term for the late-summer spike in humidity from corn plants cooling themselves was “something that locals very much know about,” Boustead, a meteorologist and climatologist, recalled.

But this hallmark of Midwestern summer might be growing stickier thanks to climate change and the steady march of industrial agriculture. Climate change is driving warmer temperatures and warmer nights and allowing the atmosphere to hold more moisture. It’s also changed growing conditions, allowing farmers to plant corn further north and increasing the total amount of corn in the United States.

Farmers are also planting more acres of corn, in part to meet demand for ethanol, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service. It all means more plants working harder to stay cool — pumping out humidity that adds to steamy misery like that blanketing much of the U.S. this week.

It’s especially noticeable in the Midwest because so much corn is grown there and it all reaches the stage of evapotranspiration at around the same time, so “you get that real surge there that’s noticeable,” Boustead said.

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