More uneven distributions overturn benefits of higher precipitation for crop yields
By Ram Fishman. 2016
144 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Climate change is expected to lead to more uneven temporal distributions of precipitation, but the impacts on human systems are little studied. Most existing, statistically based agricultural climate change impact projections only account for changes in total precipitation, ignoring its intra-seasonal distribution, and conclude that in places that will become wetter, agriculture will benefit. Here, an analysis of daily rainfall and crop yield data from across India (1970–2003), where a fifth of global cereal supply is produced, shows that decreases in the number of rainy days have robust negative impacts that are large enough to overturn the benefits of increased total precipitation for the yields of most major crops. As an illustration, the net, mid 21st century projection for rice production shifts from +2% to −11% when changes in distribution are also accounted for, independently of additional negative impacts of rising temperatures.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/53740e4fb126eecb0923ff80ca76f201efa11a1c
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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Senthold Asseng
- David B. Lobell
- Thomas W. Hertel
- R. A. Fischer
- Andrew Crane-Droesch
- Marshall Burke
- W. Schlenker
- Uris Lantz C. Baldos
In Global and Planetary Change
Citations in the corpus
- Does rainfall matter for economic growth? Evidence from global sub-national data (1990–2014) (2019, unknown): “3 At the other end of the spectrum is evidence which finds causal impacts between precipitation and agriculture (Auffhammer et al. 2006; Rowhani et al. 2011; Fishman 2016; Lesk et al. 2016; Zaveri, Russ and Damania 2018); industry and firm performance (Islam and Hyland 2018); urban growth (Desbureau”
- Comparing estimates of climate change impacts from process-based and statistical crop models (2017, background): “One potential approach is to develop statistical models that include measures that more explicitly capture within-season rainfall dynamics (Rowhani et al 2011, Fishman 2016), so that these aspects can be explicitly held constant or changed as desired.”