Direct Hydro-Climatic Impacts of Renewable Energy Expansion.

Concerns owing to anthropogenic climate change and energy security are important factors driving continued pursuit of renewable energy, both domestically and abroad. First generation biofuel production, to date, has revealed indirect and unintended detrimental consequences related to climate and food security, illustrating a non-sustainable approach to bioenergy production.  During this talk, I will discuss the direct impacts on hydro-climate resulting from potential land-use change associated with biomass energy expansion for the two largest ethanol producers in the world: the United States and Brazil.

The Advanced Research version of the Weather and Research Forecasting [WRF] climate modeling tool coupled to a land surface model that allows for two-way interaction and feedback between the overlying atmosphere and surface/sub-surface was used in all numerical simulations. 

Utility of observationally-based bioenergy crop parameterizations within WRF reveals that conversion of annual (e.g., maize) to perennial (e.g., miscanthus) bioenergy cropping systems, over the U.S., imparts considerable cooling of order 1-2ºC (averaged over the growing season). A similar methodological approach over Brazil indicates that sugar cane expansion over the cerrado leads to significant cooling (order of 1-2ºC) during the growing season, but is largely offset post-harvest.