Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations

Matias Heino,Stefan Siebert,Dieter Gerten,Vera Heck,Matti Kummu,Philip J Ward,Michael J Puma

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-02071-5

Abstract

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) peaked strongly during the boreal winter 2015–2016, leading to food insecurity in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Besides ENSO, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are known to impact crop yields worldwide. Here we assess for the first time in a unified framework the relationships between ENSO, IOD and NAO and simulated crop productivity at the sub-country scale. Our findings reveal that during 1961–2010, crop productivity is significantly influenced by at least one large-scale climate oscillation in two-thirds of global cropland area. Besides observing new possible links, especially for NAO in Africa and the Middle East, our analyses confirm several known relationships between crop productivity and these oscillations. Our results improve the understanding of climatological crop productivity drivers, which is essential for enhancing food security in many of the most vulnerable places on the planet.

Highlights

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) peaked strongly during the boreal winter 2015–2016, leading to food insecurity in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America
To assess how well interannual variability in crop productivity is explained by the chosen climate oscillations, we first compared the simulated crop productivity during years with strong deviations in these climate oscillations with all years
We identified the sensitivity of crop productivity to variations in the oscillation indices, and we examined whether and where crop productivity is influenced by multiple oscillations simultaneously

Summary

Introduction

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) peaked strongly during the boreal winter 2015–2016, leading to food insecurity in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. To improve the value of these forecasts, detailed information about the impacts of climate oscillations on crop yields would be an invaluable contribution towards ensuring food security, especially given the close relationship between supply and demand in the global food system[10]. Links between major historical ENSO events and agricultural disruptions have been documented[17], all of which had indelible impacts on past societies They have not been studied as extensively, IOD and NAO are known to influence crop yields in many areas. We reveal the impacts of ENSO, NAO and IOD on the productivity of 12 major crop types globally for the past five decades using a consistent framework This greatly extends past studies among which scale, data, methodology and time span have varied. Thereby, it provides information that can be used for increasing resilience towards natural hazards related to these oscillations in many regions across the globe

Methods

Results

Conclusion