Synchronous crop failures and climate-forced production variability

Large-scale modes of climate variability can force widespread crop yield anomalies and are therefore often presented as a risk to food security. We quantify how modes of climate variability contribute to crop production variance. We find that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science Advances
Main Authors: Anderson, W. B., Seager, R., Baethgen, W., Cane, M., You, Liangzhi
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
crop losses
agricultural production
climate
crop production
climate change
spatial data
crop failures
climate modes
Indian
Isi
North Atlantic
North Atlantic oscillation
Online Access:https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/7/eaaw1976
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw1976
http://ebrary.ifpri.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15738coll5/id/6731
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Summary:Large-scale modes of climate variability can force widespread crop yield anomalies and are therefore often presented as a risk to food security. We quantify how modes of climate variability contribute to crop production variance. We find that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), tropical Atlantic variability (TAV), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) together account for 18, 7, and 6% of globally aggregated maize, soybean, and wheat production variability, respectively. The lower fractions of global-scale soybean and wheat production variability result from substantial but offsetting climate-forced production anomalies. All climate modes are important in at least one region studied. In 1983, ENSO, the only mode capable of forcing globally synchronous crop failures, was responsible for the largest synchronous crop failure in the modern historical record. Our results provide the basis for monitoring, and potentially predicting, simultaneous crop failures. PR IFPRI3; ISI EPTD

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