Studying Climate Change and Precipitation Trends for North Dakota, United States

By Ambika Badh and Adnan Akyuz.

Published by The International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses

Format	Price
Article: Print	$US10.00
Article: Electronic	$US5.00

According to many experts, water availability and quality will be the main issue for the societies and the environment under climate change; hence it is necessary to improve our understanding of the problems involved. Earlier studies have quantified the climate change for North Dakota, United States, in terms of the changes in the growing season length. The growing season length for the state on an average is said to have increased by 1.2 days per decade from 1879 to 2008, which is a strong evidence for the changing climate. In our study we analyzed this climate change in the precipitation pattern of the state. Average annual precipitation for eight stations in North Dakota was tabulated from 1874 to 2008. Fargo, Bismarck, Minot, Pembina, Williston, Jamestown, Langdon and Dickinson were selected based on the accuracy of data, length of period, and availability with the least missing data since the historical climate records have been recorded for these stations. They also provided a diverse spatial resolution to cover the eight most prime agricultural locations of the state. Prime goal of our research was to calculate the average annual rate of change (trend) in the precipitation for each station since 1874. Each station showed a unique annual precipitation trend. Fargo, Bismarck, Jamestown and Williston showed a negative trend in the annual precipitation while Pembina, Minot, Langdon and Dickinson showed a positive trend in the annual precipitation for the given time period. But on an average for the state as a whole, annual precipitation trend did not show much deviation from the long term average for the time period under study.

Keywords:	Climate Change, Precipitation, North Dakota

International Journal of Climate Change: Impacts and Responses, Volume 2, Issue 2, pp.97-108. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 779.181KB).

Dr Ambika Badh

Phd Student, Department of Natural Resources and Management, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

A PhD student in the department of Natural Resources and Management at NDSU. Her research work deals with the impact of climate change on the growing season and crop selection in the United states. Global warming is said to be increasing the average temperature of our globe. She is interested to work with the actual temperature data and predict how the temperature might change in the coming years and how will this effect the lives of the farmers in the United States.

Dr. Adnan Akyuz

North Dakota State Climatologist, Director of NDAWN and Assistant Professor, North Dakota Agricultural Weather Center, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA

Presently Dr Adnan Akyuz is the North Dakota State climatologist. He is an assistant professor at NDSU and also holds the position of the director at NDAWN (North Dakota Agricultural Weather) centre of NDSU. He has been earlier working as Climate Products Services and Outreach Specialist for the National Weather Service, NOAA, and Adjunct Asst. Prof. at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He did his Post-Doctorate from Department of Soil and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia. He is involved in a lot of research work related to the impacts of climate change.

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