Greater Incidence of Disruptions in Food Production Projected

Green Car Congress1 relays a report recently published Science that reiterates concern for the effect that climate change could have upon global food production. The blog previously relayed a similar concern expressed William Cline, who authored a study for the FAO (U.N.-affililated Food and Agriculture Organization). This U.N. study indicated that the average annual growth in yields during the 1960s and 1970s was 2.6 percent per year – yet by the 1980s and 1990s it had slowed to 1.8 percent.

The more recent study looked more specifically at 2 disruptions of food production that 1) occurred in recent history and 2) could be attributed to a rise in temperatures. The authors of the study then extrapolated from these two events onto the remainder of the 21st century using 23 climate models.

David Battisti of the University of Washington and Rosamond Naylor of Stanford University compared two historically significant examples of severe heat-induced crop decline—France in 2003 and the Ukraine in 1972—to average temperatures for more than a century. They found that climatological daily high temperatures from June to August were approximately 2-4 ºC higher in France and 3-5 ºC higher in the Ukraine than each region’s 1900-2006 average for those months.


Source: David S. Battisti, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington and Rosamond L. Naylor, Program on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University. Click here to embiggen.
“Likelihood, in percentage, that regional average summer temperatures during (a) 2040—2060 and (b) 2080—2100 will exceed the highest average summer temperatures on record for those regions from 1900 to 2006.”

The study finds that there is a greater than 90% likelihood that by 2080-2100, growing season temperatures will exceed even the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded in the last century for the majority of the world’s tropics and subtropics, exposing an area with a current population of more than three billion people to food insecurity.

Continue reading here: 2011 Fall Drought and Flooded

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