Simulation of extreme low crop yields.
Abstract
Climate change is projected to increase climate variability and the frequency of extreme weather events with possibly disastrous consequences for agriculture, food supply and national security. A noticeable extreme weather event which had large consequences for the world was the Russian Heat Wave (drought and heat) in 2010 contributing to the Arab Spring. This is because North Africa has been the main importing region of wheat from Russia. With less political consequences, but with similar magnitude of crop production impact, was the surprise yield drop in France in 2016. This yield drop reduced the national wheat production of France, the 5th largest wheat producer in the world, by 30%. In line with projected climate change trends for France, a warmer early winter and a very rainy spring reduced crop growth directly through excess water and nutrient losses and indirectly through spreading of diseases which were not obvious to farmers and farm advisers at the time. To consider the impact of extreme weather events on agricultural production in future climate impact scenarios, and to improve current seasonal forecast capabilities and crop management decision support tools, our understanding of the impact of extreme weather events in agriculture and our modeling capability of such impacts needs to be improved. While crop models can simulate the impact of droughts and heat waves, other direct and indirect climatic factors contributing to extreme low yields such as excess water and diseases are usually less advanced. The current state of modeling extreme impacts in crop production, data availability of extreme events and required model improvements are discussed.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMGC076..02A
- Keywords:
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- 0402 Agricultural systems;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 4313 Extreme events;
- NATURAL HAZARDS