From the University of Leeds, the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter via Eurekalert. No mention of the blueberry crop though.
Crop failures set to increase under climate change
Large-scale crop failures like the one that caused the recent Russian wheat crisis are likely to become more common under climate change due to an increased frequency of extreme weather events, a new study shows.
However, the worst effects of these events on agriculture could be mitigated by improved farming and the development of new crops, according to the research by the University of Leeds, the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter.
The unpredictability of the weather is one of the biggest challenges faced by farmers struggling to adapt to a changing climate. Some areas of the world are becoming hotter and drier, and more intense monsoon rains carry a risk of flooding and crop damage.
A summer of drought and wildfires has dramatically hit harvests across Russia this year, leading the government to place a ban on wheat exports. This led to a dramatic rise prices on the international commodity markets which is likely to have a knock-on effect in higher prices of consumer goods.
But the authors of the new study, which appears in Environmental Research Letters, argue that adaptation to climate change be possible through a combination of new crops that are more tolerant to heat and water stress, and socio-economic measures such as greater investment.
Lead author Dr Andy Challinor, from the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, said: “Due to the importance of international trade crop failure is an issue that affects everyone on the planet, not just those in crop-growing regions.
“More extreme weather events are expected to occur in the coming years due to climate change and we have shown that these events are likely to lead to more crop failures. What we need to do now is think about the solutions.
“It is highly unlikely that we will find a single intervention that is a ‘silver bullet’ for protecting crops from failure. What we need is an approach that combines building up crop tolerance to heath and water stress with socio-economic interventions.”
The team studied spring wheat crops in North East China. They used a climate model to make weather projections up to the year 2099 and then looked at the effect on crop yields. In parallel they looked at socioeconomic factors to determine how well farmers were able to adapt to drought.
While the study only looked at crops in China, the authors say this methodology can be applied to many of the other major crop-growing regions around the globe.
Study co-author Dr Evan Fraser, also of the University of Leeds, said: “It appears that more developed countries with a higher GDP tend to evolve more advanced coping mechanisms for extreme events. In China this is happening organically as the economy is growing quickly, but poorer regions such as Africa are likely to require more in the way of aid for such development.
“What is becoming clear is that we need to adopt a holistic approach: new crops for a changing climate and better farming practices that can only come about under more favourable socio-economic conditions.”
The team will now expand their research to look at other crops in different regions and they will look more closely at the reasons why increased GDP appears to protect against drought.
The research was funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council EQUIP programme and the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy.
For more information
A copy of the paper, ‘Increased crop failure due to climate change: assessing adaptation options using models and socio-economic data for wheat in China,’ is available to download here. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034012
Dr Andy Challinor is available for interview. Please contact Hannah Isom in the University of Leeds press office on 0113 343 4031 or email h.isom@leeds.ac.uk.
Notes to editors
The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise showed the University of Leeds to be the UK’s eighth biggest research powerhouse. The university is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. The university’s vision is to secure a place among the world’s top 50 by 2015.
The Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (http://www.cccep.ac.uk/) was established in 2008 to advance public and private action on climate change through rigorous, innovative research. The Centre is hosted jointly by the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (http://www.esrc.ac.uk/) and Munich Re (http://www.munichre.com/).
Contact: Hannah Isom
44-113-343-5764
Climate Change™ is the new witch, always to blame when something unfortunate happens. There’s no-one to randomly burn, so piles of money and civil rights go on the bonfire instead.
This may be good news, as it appears to be a shift towards saying we were right – climate change is a big issue – but we can deal with it. The story itself is obviously nonsense – inaccurate computer models predicting utter nonsense for after the researchers are all dead – but compared to the stuff coming out of these institutions a few years ago it is a huge backdown on the case for action.
Climate change is a huge issue, but our clever climate scientists have come up with a solution. Plant crops that are appropriate for the climate at the time you plant them. Without us farmers would have been planting bananas in greenland and herding reindeer on the sahara. Yeah for climate scientists.
Ha ha, I liked that , and added some more…(and changed a bit)
Tenuc says:
October 8, 2010 at 1:19 am
“…since the first Neanderthal woman planted the very first seed”
As a preamble, this is how it all started. Mods – OT I know – delete if necessary.
The first meeting ever was held back in the Mezzanine Era. In those days, Man’s job
was to slay his prey and bring it home for Woman, who had to figure out how to cook it.
The problem was, Man was slow and basically naked, whereas the prey had warm fur
and could run like an antelope. (In fact it *was* an antelope, only nobody knew this).
At last someone said, “Maybe if we just sat down and did some brainstorming, we
could come up with a better way to hunt our prey!” It went extremely well, plus it was
much warmer sitting in a circle, so they agreed to meet again the next day, and the next.
But the women pointed out that, prey-wise, the men had not produced anything, and
the human race was pretty much starving. The men agreed that was serious and said they
would put it right near the top of their “agenda”. At this point, the women, who were
primitive but not stupid, started eating plants, and thus modern agriculture was born. It
never would have happened without meetings.
Time to fold all this nonsense, get the Met back to some standard of weather predictability rather than promises of balmy winters without snow, that they didn’t deliver last year and seems headed for a freeze this year. They mucked it up, so time to do their penance – perhaps a few salary cuts for failing to meet performance standards.
Sadly with Australia’s political climate, we are getting disrupted (discombobulation, what a descriptive truism!!) big time. When will people wake up that when the greens are allowed to go power crazy, disasters like fire, flood and pestilence are that much worse because of their petty fogging meddling.!!
Arghhh!!
“Larry says:
October 8, 2010 at 4:08 am”
Personally, I think this relates to the age of massive mono-culture installtions in agriculture, the mechanisation\industrialisation of food production, predominatly since WWII. The massive wheat plains of the Praries in the US are at massive risk, enter Monsanto. Compare to the “patchwork” of fields (Slowly being decimated) in England. It is, well maybe once was, diverce. We need to step back and look at this divercity, again.
The new report on planning for the future of the Murray Darling river system has been mentioned above.
This is REALLY BIG.
It calls for a 37% reduction in water supply to farmers.
That will not only force many farmers off their farms and into bankrupcy.
It will also mean the destruction of many rural towns and communities.
It may also create a political rising in Australia which the threat of a carbon tax has failed to do.
There’s no question that in drought conditions governments have assigned more water than was available, not only to maintain a “healthy river” whatever that means, but also to maintain many existing farms.
So good planning is now required and I suspect some water rights will need to be cancelled.
Who pays for that? – farmers or government or well funded NGO’s?
THe BOM believes that the recent long drought will continue into the future because of global warming.
Their analysis methods need to be scrutinised by expert statisticans who are independent, wise and balanced in their thinking.
We must get the science right first before rushing in to destroy many lives.
Then we need to measure the costs and benefits of restoring the rivers to perfect health, against the costs and benefits of allowing farms, town and cities access to the water they need.
It is likely that both cannot be accomodated.
We need clear eyes to see how bad the downsides are for both a destroyed river system with all that implies for diversity and nature generally, against a destroyed (large) food producing industry and a large (formerly) happy, prosperous and viable region of Australia. (Oh! and I nearly forgot the broken families as well).
Wahch this space.
I suspect the xxxxx is about to hit the fan.
“What we need is an approach that combines building up crop tolerance to heat and water stress with socio-economic interventions.”
“crop tolerance” – I read: Monsanto GM’s
“socio-economic interventions” – I read: mandatory
http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/39219-this-supermarket-health-food-killed-these-baby-rats-in-three-weeks-
I nearly forgot.
We also need to make really sure we know that recent drought conditions have really, truly changed for good.
Or is the climate just more variable than we understood?
After all, our rainfall data at best goes back a mere 150 years or so.
With climate cycles of 60 odd years (the period fluctiating chaotically). we need some many hundres of years of data to make sure.
THe BOM appears to place most emphasis on the last 30 years history.
Is that sufficient?
“They used a climate model to make weather projections up to the year 2099…”
Using a climate model to make weather projections??? LOL!
When will this garbage science end? When will they finally return the wasted Climate Ca$h to the taxpayers?
By the way, these researchers ought to try “projecting” next year’s climate, so as to help farmers, you know, NEXT YEAR. Ooops – sorry – climate models can’t predict next year’s climate…
“But the authors of the new study, which appears in Environmental Research Letters, argue that adaptation to climate change be possible through a combination of new crops that are more tolerant to heat and water stress,”
Hum?, what is the easiest most effective solution to making crops more heat and water stress tolerant ???
Oh Oh I know says the eigth grade student, raising his hand, I know, it is that evil atmospehric gas CO2! (They never mention the benefits of CO2, only the “modeled” scare stories)
This is nothing new, from http://www.ccccok.org/museum/dustbowl.html…
“In 1934 to 1936, three record drought years were marked for the nation. In 1936, a more severe storm spread out of the plains and across most of the nation. The drought years were accompanied with record breaking heavy rains, blizzards, tornadoes and floods. In September 1930, it rained over five inches in a very short time in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The flooding in Cimarron County was accompanied by a dirt storm which damaged several small buildings and graineries. Later that year, the regions were whipped again by a strong dirt storm from the southwest until the winds gave way to a blizzard from the north.
After the blizzards in winter 1930-1931, the drought began. First the northern plains felt the dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. It was not until late September that the ground had enough water to justify planting. Because of the late planting and early frost, much of the wheat was small and weak when the spring winds of 1932 began to blow. The wheat was also beaten by dirt from the abandoned fields. In March, there were twenty-two days of dirt storms and drifts began to build in the fence rows. “
Here in the American heartland (flyover country to you folks on the coasts) we just harvested our largest soybean crop in history. The record was broken not due to acres planted, but to bushels per acre produced. Our local yeilds in Central Illinois were stunning.
Last year we had a record corn harvest, due to perfect growing weather. We only had 6 days at or above 90 degrees F (30 is normal). And still the local papers print as front page news every little piece of goat vomit barfed up by some activist pseudo scientist predicting the end of the American bread basket.
“Large-scale crop failures like the one that caused the recent Russian wheat crisis are likely to become more common under climate change due to an increased frequency of extreme weather events, a new study shows.”
Summer heat waves can occur after a very cold winter, and often do, they can occur in a cooler, or a warmer year, and have nothing to do with what is regarded as climatic change on a longer scale in any way whatsoever. Without exception, summer heat waves are primarily driven by short term changes in the solar wind velocity. Create chart here: http://omniweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/form/dx1.html
“The unpredictability of the weather is one of the biggest challenges faced by farmers struggling to adapt to a changing climate. Some areas of the world are becoming hotter and drier, and more intense monsoon rains carry a risk of flooding and crop damage.”
The timing of heat waves this summer were well predicted several times on this blog by Myself, and Piers Corbyn made a very good forecasts of circulation patterns, and identified the Moscow region in particular as having a heat wave ahead.
AusieDan says:
October 8, 2010 at 5:01 am
Try putting EWP since 1766 onto Excel and looking for trends, if you can find any that is !
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP_monthly_qc.txt
… follow the “Big Seeds”… and the “climate ready seeds”. The money wasted in research this have to return to stakeholders.
Hope they read Ryan Maue’s post.
It is disturbing that many city-dwellers, even the well educated, have grown up so divorced from the realities of weather and food production that they phantasise about some golden time when weather and climate behaved in an ideal and benign way.
The language of farmers has always been salted with war-like imagery, an echo of their constant battle with the elements over generations.
Farming has always been subject to the vagaries of weather. Even in Biblical times farmers stored surplus grain or other products from good harvests to carry the population through lean times, which were inevitable.
The ‘study’ above is nothing more than an exercise in playing with models that have little to do with reality. Or even good sense.
Global weather is either Hot and Wet or it is Cold and Dry. The deserts were created during the ice ages. Deserts are hot because they are dry. They are not dry because they are hot. Dry air has a higher temperature then moist for a given amount of energy.
Patrick Davis says:
October 8, 2010 at 4:52 am
Humans cultivate huge areas of land with monocultures, and have been doing for millenia. We use flushing toilets which flush the nutrients from the land to the sea. We have a huge impact, and real science would analyse that impact – and try to predict the implications – based on real data.
By doing these studies based on computer predictions their “research” is pretty much guaranteed to be worthless ten years from now. As if they can predict the climate 90 years from now to the level of detail to predict which crops will be planted where.
The real travesty here is that billions of dollars are being spent on “the environment” without improving the environment and making normally supportive people mistrust anything to do with “environmental issues”. Imagine if the UN environmental budget alone had been spent on better land husbandry, general environmental monitoring and cleaning up human damage – never mind the carbon credits.
Better than we Thought! No ‘Disruption’ in North Dakota! They are reported to produce 70% of US hard durum wheat… and they are having record yields and excellent prices. Let’s hear it for the independent American Capitalist farmers!
YOU DA MEN!
ND durum (hard wheat) fetching high prices, record yields
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iVkEnlfcfB7vfZv7bNEQ2Ss7WefwD9IN19LO0?docId=D9IN19LO0
Field corn and soybean yields throughout the American heartland are trending high to near record yields. Sweet corn and green bean yields were record highs in many areas of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. American farmers could get used to this ‘Global Climate Disruption’!
Ho hum,
Growers always have and always will have to vary their crops over the years as the air circulations cyclically shift first poleward, then equatorward, then poleward again as part of an everlasting natural process above their heads.
If CO2 makes any difference at all it will only affect that cyclical process to a miniscule degree.
Do AGW proponents plan to freeze the latitudinal position and relative intensities of all the air circulation systems forever ?
Do they really think the whole natural process will lock in place if we just stop all our CO2 emissions ?
Nuts.
Instead of 90 years out maybe they should work on ten at a time, maybe five. It seems to me that these models have had to work to be as wrong as they have. From temps, huricanes, rising sea levels, ice, malaria, crop yields etc., straight row of lemons. They could have got a chimp to be more acurate than those models and they wouldn’t have added any co2 to the environment because, you know, monkeys run on bananas….
“… better farming practices that can only come about under more favourable socio-economic conditions.”
Sounds like a call to modernization which is best brought about by energy efficient, fossil fuel based equipment and ready access to global markets. I agree… allow African and Asian agriculture to modernize up to western standards in order to mitigate the supposed negative effects of global warming / climate change / global climate disruption. In other words, the best solution to the perceived dangers of modernization is more modernization. How quaintly non-Malthusian.