Higher Temperatures Seen Reducing Global Harvests

摘要

Thousands of people died from the heat that baked western Europe in the summer of 2003. The heat wave also devastated the region's agricultural sector: In France, where temperatures were 3.6℃ above normal, the country's corn and fruit harvests fell more than 25%. Thirty-one years earlier, another very hot summer shrank harvests in southwest Russia and Ukraine and led to a tripling in world grain prices. By the end of the century, two researchers predict, those summers may seem like cool ones, and the impact on agriculture will be even greater. In a paper appearing on page 240, atmospheric scientist David Battisti of the University of Washington, Seattle, and economist Rosamond Naylor of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, apply 23 global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to estimate end-of-century temperatures. Their conclusions with regard to agriculture are sobering. "In the past, heat waves, drought, and food shortages have hit particular regions," says Battisti.