Aspects of climate change prediction relevant to crop productivity.
Projected changes in surface climate are reviewed at a range of temporal scales, with an emphasis on tropical northern Africa--a region considered to be particularly vulnerable to climate change. Noting the key aspects of 'weather' affecting crop yield, we then consider relevant and projected change using output from a range of state of the art global climate models (GCMs), and for different future emission scenarios. The outputs from the models reveal significant inter-model variation in the change expected by the end of the twenty-first century for even the lowest IPCC emission scenario. We provide a set of recommendations on future model diagnostics, configurations and ease of use to close further the gap between GCMs and smaller-scale crop models. This has the potential to empower countries to make their own assessments of vulnerability to climate change induced periods of food scarcity.
Huntingford
Chris
C
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 8BB, UK. chg@ceh.ac.uk
Lambert
F Hugo
FH
Gash
John H C
JH
Taylor
Christopher M
CM
Challinor
Andrew J
AJ
D000352:Africa, Northern; D000354:Africa, Western; D002980:Climate; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000592:standards / Q000600:supply & distribution; D005523:Food Supply; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011891:Rain; D013696:Temperature