Wh. Raymond et al., EVIDENCE OF AN AGRICULTURAL HEAT-ISLAND IN THE LOWER MISSISSIPPI RIVER FLOODPLAIN, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 75(6), 1994, pp. 1019-1025
The Mississippi River floodplain in the states of Arkansas, Tennessee,
Mississippi, and Louisiana presents a readily discernible feature in
weather satellite images.This flood plain appears in the spring and ea
rly summer as a daytime warm anomaly at infrared (IR) wavelengths and
as a bright reflective area at visible wavelengths. Remnants of this f
eature can occasionally be identified at nighttime in the IR satellite
images. During June the normalized difference vegetation index identi
fies major contrasts between this intense agricultural region and the
surrounding mixed-forest region. This distinction and the homogeneity
of the floodplain, with its alluvial soil, contrast with the encirclin
g region, creating an agricultural region containing heat island featu
res. Thirty years of climatological surface station data for the month
of June reveal that the surface air temperatures in the floodplain ex
perience less diurnal variation than those in the surrounding regions.
This is primarily because nighttime minimums are warmer in the Missis
sippi River floodplain.