Why are agricultural impacts of climate change so uncertain? The importance of temperature relative to precipitation

被引:267
作者
Lobell, David B. [1 ]
Burke, Marshall B. [1 ]
机构
[1] Stanford Univ, Program Food Secur & Environm, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
来源
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS | 2008年 / 3卷 / 03期
关键词
global warming; food production; sensitivity analysis;
D O I
10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/034007
中图分类号
X [环境科学、安全科学];
学科分类号
08 ; 0830 ;
摘要
Estimates of climate change impacts are often characterized by large uncertainties that reflect ignorance of many physical, biological, and socio-economic processes, and which hamper efforts to anticipate and adapt to climate change. A key to reducing these uncertainties is improved understanding of the relative contributions of individual factors. We evaluated uncertainties for projections of climate change impacts on crop production for 94 crop-region combinations that account for the bulk of calories consumed by malnourished populations. Specifically, we focused on the relative contributions of four factors: climate model projections of future temperature and precipitation, and the sensitivities of crops to temperature and precipitation changes. Surprisingly, uncertainties related to temperature represented a greater contribution to climate change impact uncertainty than those related to precipitation for most crops and regions, and in particular the sensitivity of crop yields to temperature was a critical source of uncertainty. These findings occurred despite rainfall's important contribution to year-to-year variability in crop yields and large disagreements among global climate models over the direction of future regional rainfall changes, and reflect the large magnitude of future warming relative to historical variability. We conclude that progress in understanding crop responses to temperature and the magnitude of regional temperature changes are two of the most important needs for climate change impact assessments and adaptation efforts for agriculture.
引用
收藏
页数:8
相关论文
共 23 条
[11]   Comparative responses of EPIC and CERES crop models to high and low spatial resolution climate change scenarios [J].
Mearns, LO ;
Mavromatis, T ;
Tsvetsinskaya, E ;
Hays, C ;
Easterling, W .
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES, 1999, 104 (D6) :6623-6646
[12]   An improved method of constructing a database of monthly climate observations and associated high-resolution grids [J].
Mitchell, TD ;
Jones, PD .
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY, 2005, 25 (06) :693-712
[13]   ALLOWING FOR WEATHER IN CROP PRODUCTION-MODEL BUILDING [J].
OURY, B .
JOURNAL OF FARM ECONOMICS, 1965, 47 (02) :270-283
[14]   Effects of climate change on global food production under SRES emissions and socio-economic scenarios [J].
Parry, ML ;
Rosenzweig, C ;
Iglesias, A ;
Livermore, M ;
Fischer, G .
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE-HUMAN AND POLICY DIMENSIONS, 2004, 14 (01) :53-67
[15]   Crop responses to climatic variation [J].
Porter, JR ;
Semenov, MA .
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2005, 360 (1463) :2021-2035
[16]   Why is climate sensitivity so unpredictable? [J].
Roe, Gerard H. ;
Baker, Marcia B. .
SCIENCE, 2007, 318 (5850) :629-632
[17]   Nonlinear effects of weather on corn yields [J].
Schlenker, Wolfram ;
Roberts, Michael J. .
REVIEW OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, 2006, 28 (03) :391-398
[18]   Impacts of present and future climate variability and change on agriculture and forestry in the arid and semi-arid tropics [J].
Sivakumar, MVK ;
Das, HP ;
Brunini, O .
CLIMATIC CHANGE, 2005, 70 (1-2) :31-72
[19]   Introduction: food crops in a changing climate [J].
Slingo, JM ;
Challinor, AJ ;
Hoskins, BJ ;
Wheeler, TR .
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, 2005, 360 (1463) :1983-1989
[20]   What might we learn from climate forecasts? [J].
Smith, LA .
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 2002, 99 :2487-2492