American Geophysical Union Become an AGU Member
Subscribe to AGU Journals		 AGU Home AGU Publications

Read Full Article (file size: 245264 bytes)    Cited by

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 35, L08705, doi:10.1029/2008GL033423, 2008

Towards probabilistic projections of climate change impacts on global crop yields

C. Tebaldi

Climate Central, Princeton, New Jersey, USA


D. B. Lobell

Program on Food Security and the Environment, Woods Institute for the Environment and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA


Abstract

There is a widely recognized need in the scientific and policy communities for probabilistic estimates of climate change impacts, beyond simple scenario analysis. Here we propose a methodology to evaluate one major climate change impact - changes in global average yields of wheat, maize, and barley by 2030 - by a probabilistic approach that integrates uncertainties in climate change and crop yield responses to temperature, precipitation, and carbon dioxide. The resulting probability distributions, which are conditional on assuming the SRES A1B emission scenario and no agricultural adaptation, indicate expected changes of +1.6%, −14.1%, −1.8% for wheat, maize, and barley, with 95% probability intervals of (−4.1, +6.7), (−28.0, −4.3), (−11.0, 6.2) in percent of current yields, respectively. This fully probabilistic analysis aims at quantifying the range of plausible outcomes and allows us to gauge the relative importance of different sources of uncertainty.

Received 4 February 2008; accepted 17 March 2008; published 19 April 2008.

Keywords: climate change; crop yield change; probabilistic projections.

Index Terms: 1630 Global Change: Impacts of global change (1225); 3275 Mathematical Geophysics: Uncertainty quantification (1873); 3245 Mathematical Geophysics: Probabilistic forecasting (3238); 1626 Global Change: Global climate models (3337, 4928); 6309 Policy Sciences: Decision making under uncertainty.

Read Full Article (file size: 245264 bytes)    Cited by

Citation: Tebaldi, C., and D. B. Lobell (2008), Towards probabilistic projections of climate change impacts on global crop yields, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L08705, doi:10.1029/2008GL033423.