Abstract
Many studies have examined the role of mean climate change in agriculture, but an understanding of the influence of inter-annual climate variations on crop yields in different regions remains elusive. We use detailed crop statistics time series for ∼13,500 political units to examine how recent climate variability led to variations in maize, rice, wheat and soybean crop yields worldwide. While some areas show no significant influence of climate variability, in substantial areas of the global breadbaskets, >60% of the yield variability can be explained by climate variability. Globally, climate variability accounts for roughly a third (∼32-39%) of the observed yield variability. Our study uniquely illustrates spatial patterns in the relationship between climate variability and crop yield variability, highlighting where variations in temperature, precipitation or their interaction explain yield variability. We discuss key drivers for the observed variations to target further research and policy interventions geared towards buffering future crop production from climate variability.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 5989 |
| Journal | Nature communications |
| Volume | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 22 2015 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank George Allez, Peder Engstrom, Maryan Abdi, Lewei He and Madison Rogers for help in collecting and digitizing a portion of the data. We thank Peder Engstrom for help with plotting Supplementary Fig. 4. This work greatly benefitted from discussions with Jonathan Foley. We also benefitted from the comments of Kimberly Carlson, Lijun Zuo and other colleagues. Research support was primarily provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Institute on Environment. Additional research support was from the McKnight Foundation,the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Stanford University, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Interdisciplinary Earth Science program. Contributions by General Mills, Mosaic, Cargill, Pentair, Google.org, Kellogg’s, Mars and PepsiCo supported stakeholder outreach and public engagement. G.K.M. was also supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
