Climate change is already bad as it is, causing worldwide damage on season patterns and loss of wildlife. It turns out that the adverse effects of climate change is also threatening food security of the years to come.
A new study looking at agricultural, climate, and hydrological models found out that the shortage of freshwater supply for irrigation could pose serious climate change implications on agriculture. Taking into account the current trajectory of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, the study concluded that climate change will cause a dwindled production of major food crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soybean by as much as 43 percent. Hydrological models, on the other hand, claims that due to the conversion of irrigated fields back into rain-dependent crops, the agricultural industry might lose more than what is expected.
Both agricultural and hydrological models study the effect of climate on certain aspects of the environment but they are being used by varying research communities to achieve different goals. Agricultural models are used to see the effects of temperature, precipitation, and other factors on the crops. On the other hand, the hydrological model is utilized to study irrigation-related phenomenon such as water availability, storm runoff, and stream flow.
Joshua Elliott, lead author of the study from the Computation Institute’s Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP) and Argonne National Laboratory, and his colleagues from the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) created these models.
"It's a huge effect, and an effect that's basically on the same order of magnitude as the direct effect of climate change," Elliott wrote.
The study also discovered a new paradigm on how climate change can have major agricultural implications. For example, holding other factors constant, climate change can cause a loss of 400-2600 petacalories of food supply which comprises about 8-43 percent. When compared with the effect of agricultural land conversion, the loss could amount to 600-2900 petacalories.
However, although the models generally predicted water shortages for major parts of the world such Western U.S, India, and China, it also revealed that other areas might end with freshwater surplus. According to Elliott, effective redistribution of water supply might alleviate the negative effects that climate change can cause to the agricultural industry.
The study was published in the December 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
