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Title: Quantifying the indirect impacts of climate on agriculture: an inter-method comparison

Journal Article · · Environmental Research Letters
 [1];  [2]
  1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States). Joint Global Change Research Inst.
  2. Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
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Climate change and increases in CO2 concentration affect the productivity of land, with implications for land use, land cover, and agricultural production. Much of the literature on the effect of climate on agriculture has focused on linking projections of changes in climate to process-based or statistical crop models. However, the changes in productivity have broader economic implications that cannot be quantified in crop models alone. How important are these socio-economic feedbacks to a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of climate change on agriculture? In this paper, we attempt to measure the importance of these interaction effects through an inter-method comparison between process models, statistical models, and integrated assessment model (IAMs). We find the impacts on crop yields vary widely between these three modeling approaches. Yield impacts generated by the IAMs are 20%-40% higher than the yield impacts generated by process-based or statistical crop models, with indirect climate effects adjusting yields by between - 12% and + 15% (e.g. input substitution and crop switching). The remaining effects are due to technological change.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; SC0005171
OSTI ID:
1405199
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1422312
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-122866
Journal Information:
Environmental Research Letters, Journal Name: Environmental Research Letters Vol. 12 Journal Issue: 11; ISSN 1748-9326
Publisher:
IOP PublishingCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United Kingdom
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 14 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (5)

Assessing agricultural risks of climate change in the 21st century in a global gridded crop model intercomparison journal December 2013
Projecting future crop productivity for global economic modeling journal December 2013
Economic and Physical Modeling of land use in gcam 3.0 and an Application to Agricultural Productivity, Land, and Terrestrial Carbon journal May 2014
Land-use transition for bioenergy and climate stabilization: model comparison of drivers, impacts and interactions with other land use based mitigation options journal September 2013
Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change journal November 1997

Cited By (3)

Synthesis and Review: an inter-method comparison of climate change impacts on agriculture journal June 2018
Toward sustainable climate change adaptation journal January 2020
GCAM v5.1: representing the linkages between energy, water, land, climate, and economic systems journal January 2019

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
integrated assessment modeling
climate change
agriculture impacts