Weather and resources

Weather systems are a pervasive aspect of the natural environment. Impacts of weather on resources range from soil and beach erosion to the health of forests and livestock. Access to resources can be limited by weather, and the wind and precipitation that weather systems bring are important resources themselves.

Background

Weather is the state of the at a given place and time as described by parameters such as air temperature, pressure, moisture content, wind direction and speed, visibility, sky conditions, and the occurrence of phenomena such as rain, snow, and thunderstorms. In contrast, is a more long-term description of the average weather and its expected variability for a particular location or region.

Changing weather conditions are caused by moving weather systems that form in, and can subsequently alter, atmospheric circulations of many spatial and temporal scales. These circulations serve a purpose in the Earth-atmosphere system. Like their oceanic counterpart, atmospheric circulations systematically transport fluids (air in the case of the atmosphere, and water in the case of the oceans) of varying energy content in an attempt to balance the uneven distribution of solar energy. In so doing, weather systems can have notable impacts on natural resources and on the human ability to obtain resources. In addition, weather itself can be considered a resource in several regards.

Throughout the twenty-first century, humanity has experienced a rise in occurrence of severe weather patterns. These include floods, droughts, and powerful storms. Scientists attribute this rise to global climate change, which has been caused by humanity's continued release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Additionally, experts expect these weather patterns to continue to increase in frequency and severity in coming decades.

Impact of Weather on Resources

Soil erosion, an ongoing natural process, is considered to be a problem when it happens too quickly. Weather systems exacerbate the erosion of when strong surface winds scour bare land and when heavy rains or rapid snowmelt produce runoff. Erosion by winds, a global concern, turned the American Plains region into the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. In the late twentieth century, satellite-borne sensors tuned to detect atmospheric aerosols as a method of tracing airflow showed a notable plume of dust moving westward off Africa.

Moving water is an equally efficient cause of soil erosion. Heavy rainfall can quickly produce gullies and ravines, even on gently sloping surfaces. Sediment loading of the runoff can lead to siltation of reservoirs and increases the need for filtration at industrial water intakes. Contaminants other than silt can also be introduced to waterways. During the extensive 1993 Midwest flooding along the Mississippi River, it was expected that the floodwaters would dilute any pesticides washed in from agricultural lands. However, the concentration of pesticides proved to be higher than typically observed.

Coastal erosion can be greatly accelerated by land-falling hurricanes and extratropical cyclones that bring both strong winds and heavy precipitation. The northeastern coast of the United States is occasionally battered by low-pressure systems known as “nor’easters.” These storms are named for the damaging northeasterly winds found on the north side of the storm. The wind speeds in this sector are especially strong because they experience reduced friction in traveling over the Atlantic Ocean and can strike land with near hurricane force. One of the most destructive nor’easters in U.S. history struck on March 7, 1962, producing waves more than 10 meters high and causing more than $300 million in property damage along 1,000 kilometers of the Atlantic coast.

Weather systems also have an impact on forest resources. Forest fires are frequently initiated by lightning from storms. Lightning is a particular problem in arid regions, where the layer of air between the cloud base and the surface, known as the subcloud layer, may be so dry that any rain falling from the storm evaporates before reaching the ground. Thus, many thunderstorms cannot extinguish fires they have started. Another problem formed in and transported by weather systems is acid precipitation, which has been associated with killing or reducing forests in both Europe and North America.

Excessive heat and high relative humidity can place dangerous stress on livestock. This is particularly true for animals that are confined or in transport. Hogs are especially susceptible, because they lose the majority of their body heat through respiration. The heat index (also known as the apparent temperature), though developed as a measure of human discomfort, works equally well as an indicator of danger to confined livestock.

Weather systems can also have less obvious yet significant impacts on natural resources. The tropopause is the interface between the troposphere and stratosphere and is typically a smooth transition zone between these layers. However, the tropopause has been observed to fold back on itself and extrude downward during the formation of fronts in the middle and upper troposphere. This phenomenon, known as tropopause folding, is accompanied by a flow of stratospheric air into the troposphere and a compensating flow of tropospheric air into the stratosphere. While there is little or no mixing between these layers under typical conditions, tropopause folds can produce significant mixing. Folds are believed to be associated with the rapid development of intense surface low-pressure systems as well as with the downward transport of and radioactive debris (from past airborne nuclear tests) into the troposphere and the upward transport of ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons into the stratosphere.

Weather and Access to Resources

Adverse weather conditions can increase the costs associated with resource extraction. One location where weather is a primary consideration is in the oil fields of the North Sea. This stretch of ocean is one of the world’s roughest bodies of water and is subject to severe storms. Waves have reached 30 meters in height. Construction and operation of oil rigs can be both expensive and hazardous. Drilling is normally feasible for only about 175 days per year. Rough weather requires that equipment be exceptionally robust, and installations that transport oil and gas must be well protected. In spite of these difficulties, development in this region continues—partly because procedures for resource extraction that succeed under the extreme conditions of the North Sea generally prove more than adequate for developments in other parts of the world.

Weather as a Resource

Weather systems themselves can be viewed as a resource or as providing resources. This aspect of weather can perhaps be best illustrated by considering water and energy.

Much of the world’s population is directly dependent upon rainfall and snowmelt for its drinking water as well as for irrigation. Weather systems on all scales contribute to the natural purification of ocean water through evaporation, and they facilitate its transport away from the source region and its eventual in the form of rain and snow. In the United States, the majority of the water that falls as rain and snow east of the Rocky Mountains originates from evaporation off the Gulf of Mexico. Weather patterns that disrupt the poleward transport of moist air can result in extended droughts, as was observed in the central United States during the summer of 1988.

In semiarid agricultural regions where irrigation may not be a viable option, cloud seeding has been used in attempts to produce precipitation in clouds that might otherwise dissipate. Often the limiting factor in the production of precipitation in a cloud outside the tropics is an adequate amount of ice in the cloud. Clouds with a mixture of ice and liquid water can produce precipitation, since air that is unsaturated with respect to liquid water is oversaturated with respect to ice. As a result, water molecules will evaporate from the liquid cloud droplets and deposit themselves on the ice crystals. In clouds lacking ice for this transfer, the cloud droplets simply evaporate, and the cloud dissipates.

Cloud seeding in clouds with subfreezing temperatures is accomplished in one of two ways. In the first method, the cloud is cooled by adding dry ice (solidified carbon dioxide) in an attempt to convert supercooled water (liquid water below the freezing point) to ice. In the second, a substance such as silver iodide that promotes the formation of ice crystals by providing freezing nuclei is introduced. The effectiveness of cloud-seeding experiments is very difficult to measure, but results suggest that an increase in precipitation of about 10 percent can be expected if clouds are seeded.

The kinetic energy of the wind can be extracted by modern wind machines and converted to electricity. The greatest number of operating wind machines in the United States were once in California; however, Texas has become the leader in wind-power capacity. Energy derived from wind greatly increased in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and countries such as Denmark, Spain, and Germany garnered significant amounts of their total energy production through wind power.

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