The damage scientists expect climate change to do to crop yields can differ greatly depending on which model was used to make projections. While the most dire scenarios always loom large in the minds of the public and policymakers, most are usually not aware of how the modeling influences the outcome.
The report in the journal Global Change Biology is one of the first to compare agricultural projections generated by empirical models to those by mechanistic models. Building on similar studies from ecology, the researchers found yet more evidence that empirical models may show greater losses as a result of climate change, while mechanistic models may be overly optimistic.
The researchers ran an empirical and a mechanistic model to see how corn and wheat crops in South Africa would fare under climate change. Under the hotter, wetter conditions projected by the climate scenarios used, the empirical model estimated that corn production could drop 3%, while wheat might increase 6%. Meanwhile, the mechanistic model calculated that corn and wheat yields might go up by 6.5% and 15%, respectively.
Lyndon D. Estes, Hein Beukes, Bethany A. Bradley, Stephanie R. Debats, Michael Oppenheimer, Alex C. Ruane, Roland Schulze, Mark Tadross. Projected climate impacts to South African maize and wheat production in 2055: A comparison of empirical and mechanistic modeling approaches. Global Change Biology, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12325
Read the full Princeton Journal Watch Article HERE.
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