According to a new study published online in the journal Nature Climate Change, global wheat harvest will likely be reduced 6 percent for each degree Celsius of further temperature increase and become more variable over space and time.
Worldwide, this would correspond to 42 million tons of yield reduction, which equals a quarter of current global wheat trade.
These numbers were configured from crop models for assessing the threat of climate change to local and global food production. The study tested 30 different wheat crop models of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project against field experiments in which growing season mean temperatures ranged from 15 °C to 32 °C (59 – 89.6°F), including experiments with artificial heating.
The researchers found that in response to global temperature increases, grain yield declines are predicted for most regions in the world. Scientists from Finland, Germany, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, India, China, Australia, Canada and the United States participated in this global study.
