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A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation

Abstract

Feeding a growing global population in a changing climate presents a significant challenge to society1,2. The projected yields of crops under a range of agricultural and climatic scenarios are needed to assess food security prospects. Previous meta-analyses3 have summarized climate change impacts and adaptive potential as a function of temperature, but have not examined uncertainty, the timing of impacts, or the quantitative effectiveness of adaptation. Here we develop a new data set of more than 1,700 published simulations to evaluate yield impacts of climate change and adaptation. Without adaptation, losses in aggregate production are expected for wheat, rice and maize in both temperate and tropical regions by 2 °C of local warming. Crop-level adaptations increase simulated yields by an average of 7–15%, with adaptations more effective for wheat and rice than maize. Yield losses are greater in magnitude for the second half of the century than for the first. Consensus on yield decreases in the second half of the century is stronger in tropical than temperate regions, yet even moderate warming may reduce temperate crop yields in many locations. Although less is known about interannual variability than mean yields, the available data indicate that increases in yield variability are likely.

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Figure 1: Percentage yield change as a function of temperature for the three main crops and for temperate and tropical regions for local mean temperature changes up to 5 °C (n = 1,048 from 66 studies).
Figure 2: Quantification of the benefits of adaptation.
Figure 3: Projected changes in crop yield as a function of time for all crops and regions (n = 1,090 from 42 studies).
Figure 4: Projected percentage change in yield coefficient of variation for wheat, maize, rice and C4 crops taken from C2010 (ref. 21), B2012 (ref. 31), T2009 (ref. 32), TZ2013a (ref. 33), TZ2013b (ref. 34) and U2012 (ref. 35).

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Acknowledgements

The study was financially supported by the NERC EQUIP programme http://www.equip.leeds.ac.uk and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), with the financial assistance of the European Union, Canadian International Development Agency, World Bank, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Danida and with the technical support of IFAD. S. Hodkinson contributed to the data set. B. Parkes produced one supplementary figure.

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All authors contributed to the data set, discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. J.W. analysed the data. D.R.S. and D.B.L. carried out the statistical analysis. A.C., D.L. and M.H. designed the study and wrote the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to A. J. Challinor.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Challinor, A., Watson, J., Lobell, D. et al. A meta-analysis of crop yield under climate change and adaptation. Nature Clim Change 4, 287–291 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2153

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