Thursday, July 31, 2014

Rising temperatures caused by climate change would slow corn and wheat yields, study finds

Climate change could have a significant impact on corn and wheat yields, Brian Sullivan reports for Bloomberg News: "Rising temperatures caused by climate change increase the odds that corn and wheat yields will slow even as global demand for the crops for food and fuel increases in the next 10 to 20 years, according to a study published in Environmental Research Letters."

"There is as much as a 10 percent chance the rate of corn yields will slow and a 5 percent probability for wheat because of human-caused climate change, said David Lobell, the associate director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University, and Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado," Sullivan writes.

Researchers found that "a rise in global temperatures of 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) would slow the rate of growth for corn by 7 percent and wheat by about 6 percent," Sullivan reports. "Corn is most vulnerable because the areas in which it is grown tend to be concentrated and therefore more susceptible to change." 

Tebaldi said, "When anthropogenic climate change is removed from the equation, the chance crop yield growth will slow falls to about one in 200. Climate change has substantially increased the prospect that crop production will fail to keep up with rising demand in the next 20 years.” (Read more)

No comments: