Agriculturally Relevant Climate Extremes and Their Trends in the World's Major Growing Regions

What is it about?

After 1980, statistically significant warming trends exist for each crop in the majority of growing regions. In particular, crops have increasingly been exposed to extreme hot temperatures, above which yields have been shown to decline. Rainfall trends are less consistent compared to temperature, with some regions receiving more rainfall and others less. Anomalous temperature and precipitation conditions are shown to often occur concurrently, with dry growing seasons more likely to be hotter, have larger drought indices, and have larger vapor pressure deficits.

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Why is it important?

We provide a holistic understanding of the historical agricultural climate extremes and how they have changed from 1951 to 2006. It demonstrates an increasing vulnerability in agriculture to temperature-related trends, which have abruptly increased exposure since 1980 to yield reducing extreme heat as well as warming growing seasons overall. Concurrent extreme conditions can have deleterious impacts on agricultural yields, and these are shown to be more likely to occur together. Since 1980, there have been coherent, increasing trends in climate indices, such as extreme hot days, globally. Historically, climate risk was spread out spatially. This spatial distribution of climate risk may become increasingly insufficient to buffer against a changing and warming climate, necessitating other climate adaptation measures to ensure food security.

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