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Tuesday, January 24th, 2017

U.S. Crop Harvests Could Suffer with Climate Change

Author:     Kavya Balaraman
Source:     Scientific American/Climatewire
Publication Date:     January 20, 2017
 Link: U.S. Crop Harvests Could Suffer with Climate Change
Stephan:   I keep writing and saying in my talks that water is destiny and I can tell from the questions I get that to most people this means, and this is correct, too much water or too little water. But that reality has many consequences and one of them is the growth of food stuffs. As we enter the era of an administration that doesn't believe climate change is real, these kinds of considerations don't even register. But they are definitely going to register on your pocketbook in the not so distant future.

Credit: Ian Sane Flickr

Shifting climate patterns in North America could hit U.S. crop production hard, possibly even halving the production of corn by the end of the century, a new study finds.

Scientists believe that the spike in average temperatures that is widely predicted by climate models for North America could hurt its agriculture sector. As the number of days that are hotter than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) increases, they now predict, estimated future harvests of wheat, soybeans and corn could drop by 22 to 49 percent, depending on the variety of the crop.

“Projections tell us that in the U.S., these crops will suffer from hotter days. Since these days will get more frequent with climate change, there will be harvest losses,” said Bernhard Schauberger, lead author of the study, released by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Schauberger and a team of scientists came to this conclusion by studying a series of computer simulations.

According to their estimates, corn and soybean plants can lose 5 percent of their harvest […]

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1 Comment

  1. Steven K Hovland on Tuesday, January 24, 2017 at 7:41 am

    The extreme weather we are having right now is probably damaging crops.

    The hottest year in 137 years is the hottest year since the end of the Maunder Minimum.