Miller Magazine Issue: 119 November 2019

32 NEWS MILLER / NOVEMBER 2019 Climate change may devastate up to 60% of the world’s wheat fields The frequency and intensity of severe droughts that negatively affect rain-fed crops like wheat, is expected to increase due to global warming. In their study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from several institutions including IIASA, the Global Change Research Institute in the Czech Republic, and the University of Ar- kansas in the US, developed a method to simultaneously quantify severe water shortages across the world’s enti- re wheat-growing area and calculate the probabilities of multiple or sequential severe water shortage events for baseline and future climates. Their projections show that, without climate change mitigation, up to 60% of the cur- rent wheat-growing area will face simultaneous severe water shortage events by the end of this century, compa- red to 15% today. “If only one country or region experiences a drought there is less impact. If multiple regions are however affe- cted simultaneously, it can affect global production and food prices, and lead to food insecurity,” explain study lead authors Miroslav Trnka, a professor at Mendel Uni- versity and senior scientist at the Global Change Research Institute, and Song Feng from the University of Arkansas. The team analyzed 27 climate models, each of which had three different scenarios. The analyses show that his- torically, the total area affected by severe drought wor- ldwide and food prices are closely related. Furthermore, even under an ambitious mitigation scenario where glo- bal warming is stabilized at 2°C compared to preindustrial levels, the results indicate an increase in the frequency and extent of adverse weather extremes and related sho- cks on the production side would be unprecedented. The authors say that the extent to which this will affect food prices and food security will largely depend on the de- velopment of other influencing factors. In addition, reac- hing ambitious mitigation targets will likely lead to higher energy prices and a bigger demand for bioenergy in the medium term, which would further reinforce the impacts of severe water shortages on wheat prices. “The long-term research focus of our team at IIASA has been on capturing the effect of shocks affecting the food markets. This study is innovative and contributes substan- tially to the neglected area of climate extremes in agri- culture, as it brings new data to light on how likely the shocks caused by drought might be in near future,” notes study coauthor, Petr Havlik, Center Head for Environmen- tal Resources Development and Deputy Program Director of the Ecosystems Services and Management Program at IIASA. In light of present-day weather patterns, severe drought could affect up to 15% of current wheat growing areas. The authors point out that, although climate change sta- bilization in line with the Paris Agreement would substan- tially reduce the negative effects, they would still double between 2041 and 2070 compared to current conditions. They conclude that future assessments of production sho- cks in food security should explicitly include the risk of se- vere, prolonged, and near-simultaneous droughts across key world wheat-producing areas.