Crop irrigation could be cooling Midwest

ATLANTA — If summers seem cooler and wetter in parts of the Midwest in recent years, you can thank — or blame — farmers, two new studies contend.

While average global temperatures rose about 0.74 degrees Celsius during the past century, the U.S. Midwest has experienced a noticeable slump in summer temperatures in recent decades, reported David Changnon, a climatologist at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, on January 19 at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.