Quantifying the impacts of compound extremes on agriculture

Haqiqi, Iman; Grogan, Danielle S.; Hertel, Thomas W.; Schlenker, Wolfram

doi:10.5194/hess-25-551-2021

Cited by 72 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…This translates to a growing risk of extreme heat stress (Coffel et al 2018, Li et al 2020)-the combination of temperature and other climate variables, like humidity, known to negatively affect the human body's functioning in hot weather-with major implications for human health (Hanna and Tait 2015, Kjellstrom et al 2016, Mora et al 2017. The effect of high temperatures on water and energy supply and demand, ecosystems, and economic and agricultural output can also be relatively larger or smaller according to the co-occurring humidity (Dunne et al 2013, Harpold and Brooks 2018, Haqiqi et al 2021. Even regions with comparatively mild climates can be strongly affected by heat stress due to a lack of physiological, behavioral, or infrastructural preparedness, stemming from resource limitations or perceived lack of need for investments such as air conditioning or heatresistant materials (Ferranti et al 2016, Guirguis et al 2018.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional and elevational patterns of extreme heat stress change in the US

Raymond

Waliser

Guan

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Increasing severity of extreme heat is a hallmark of climate change. Its impacts depend on temperature but also on moisture and solar radiation, each with distinct spatial patterns and vertical profiles. Here, we consider these variables’ combined effect on extreme heat stress, as measured by the environmental stress index, using a suite of high-resolution climate simulations for historical (1980-2005) and future (2074-2099, RCP8.5) periods. We find that observed extreme heat stress drops off nearly linearly with elevation above a coastal zone, at a rate that is larger in more humid regions. Future projections indicate dramatic relative increases whereby the historical top-1% summer heat stress value may occur on about 25-50% of future summer days under the RCP8.5 scenario. Heat stress increases tend to be larger at higher latitudes and in areas of greater temperature increase, although in the southern and eastern US moisture increases are nearly as important. Imprinted on top of this dominant pattern we find secondary effects of smaller heat stress increases near ocean coastlines, notably along the Pacific coast, and larger increases in mountains, notably the Sierra Nevada and southern Appalachians. This differential warming is attributable to the greater warming of land relative to ocean, and to larger temperature increases at higher elevations outweighing larger water-vapor increases at lower elevations. All together, our results aid in furthering knowledge about drivers and characteristics that shape future extreme heat stress at scales difficult to capture in global assessments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional and elevational patterns of extreme heat stress change in the US

Raymond

Waliser

Guan

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…For instance, it has been reported that US economic agricultural losses between 1980 and 2012 were 4 times larger during hot and dry (hot-dry) conditions compared with during drought events alone (Suzuki et al, 2014). Moreover, the response to multiple climatic stressors is complex and can be subject to interaction effects where climatic drivers create more damage in combination than the sum of each in isolation (Ben-Ari et al, 2018;Haqiqi et al, 2021;Matiu et al, 2017;Rigden et al, 2020). Interestingly, multiple climatic stressors can also result in positive interactions with beneficial effects on crop yields (Carter et al, 2016;Suzuki et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of compound hot–dry extremes on US soybean yields

et al. 2021

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Abstract. The US agriculture system supplies more than one-third of globally traded soybean, and with 90 % of US soybean produced under rainfed agriculture, soybean trade is particularly sensitive to weather and climate variability. Average growing season climate conditions can explain about one-third of US soybean yield variability. Additionally, crops can be sensitive to specific short-term weather extremes, occurring in isolation or compounding at key moments throughout crop development. Here, we identify the dominant within-season climate drivers that can explain soybean yield variability in the US, and we explore the synergistic effects between drivers that can lead to severe impacts. The study combines weather data from reanalysis and satellite-informed root zone soil moisture fields with subnational crop yields using statistical methods that account for interaction effects. On average, our models can explain about two-thirds of the year-to-year yield variability (70 % for all years and 60 % for out-of-sample predictions). The largest negative influence on soybean yields is driven by high temperature and low soil moisture during the summer crop reproductive period. Moreover, due to synergistic effects, heat is considerably more damaging to soybean crops during dry conditions and is less problematic during wet conditions. Compounding and interacting hot and dry (hot–dry) summer conditions (defined by the 95th and 5th percentiles of temperature and soil moisture respectively) reduce yields by 2 standard deviations. This sensitivity is 4 and 3 times larger than the sensitivity to hot or dry conditions alone respectively. Other relevant drivers of negative yield responses are lower temperatures early and late in the season, excessive precipitation in the early season, and dry conditions in the late season. We note that the sensitivity to the identified drivers varies across the spatial domain. Higher latitudes, and thus colder regions, are positively affected by high temperatures during the summer period. On the other hand, warmer southeastern regions are positively affected by low temperatures during the late season. Historic trends in identified drivers indicate that US soybean production has generally benefited from recent shifts in weather except for increasing rainfall in the early season. Overall, warming conditions have reduced the risk of frost in the early and late seasons and have potentially allowed for earlier sowing dates. More importantly, summers have been getting cooler and wetter over the eastern US. Nevertheless, despite these positive changes, we show that the frequency of compound hot–dry summer events has remained unchanged over the 1946–2016 period. In the longer term, climate models project substantially warmer summers for the continental US, although uncertainty remains as to whether this will be accompanied by drier conditions. This highlights a critical element to explore in future studies focused on US agricultural production risk under climate change.

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“…Compound hydrometeorological extremes (e.g., hot and drought compound) exert profound impacts on agriculture and water irrigation demand (Zampieri et al, 2017;Lu et al, 2018;Ribeiro et al, 2020b;Haqiqi et al, 2021;Vogel et al, 2021). For example, the compound drought and heatwave events may affect socioecological systems (Mukherjee et al, 2020), wildfires (Abatzoglou and Williams, 2016;AghaKouchak et al, 2020;Sutanto et al, 2020), air pollution (Tressol et al, 2008;Zhang H. et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2017;Lin et al, 2020), heat-related deaths (D'Ippoliti et al, 2010;Mitchell et al, 2016).…”

Section: Conclusion and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compound Hydrometeorological Extremes: Drivers, Mechanisms and Methods

et al. 2021

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Compound extremes pose immense challenges and hazards to communities, and this is particularly true for compound hydrometeorological extremes associated with deadly floods, surges, droughts, and heat waves. To mitigate and better adapt to compound hydrometeorological extremes, we need to better understand the state of knowledge of such extremes. Here we review the current advances in understanding compound hydrometeorological extremes: compound heat wave and drought (hot-dry), compound heat stress and extreme precipitation (hot-wet), cold-wet, cold-dry and compound flooding. We focus on the drivers of these extremes and methods used to investigate and quantify their associated risk. Overall, hot-dry compound extremes are tied to subtropical highs, blocking highs, atmospheric stagnation events, and planetary wave patterns, which are modulated by atmosphere-land feedbacks. Compared with hot-dry compound extremes, hot-wet events are less examined in the literature with most works focusing on case studies. The cold-wet compound events are commonly associated with snowfall and cold frontal systems. Although cold-dry events have been found to decrease, their underlying mechanisms require further investigation. Compound flooding encompasses storm surge and high rainfall, storm surge and sea level rise, storm surge and riverine flooding, and coastal and riverine flooding. Overall, there is a growing risk of compound flooding in the future due to changes in sea level rise, storm intensity, storm precipitation, and land-use-land-cover change. To understand processes and interactions underlying compound extremes, numerical models have been used to complement statistical modeling of the dependence between the components of compound extremes. While global climate models can simulate certain types of compound extremes, high-resolution regional models coupled with land and hydrological models are required to simulate the variability of compound extremes and to project changes in the risk of such extremes. In terms of statistical modeling of compound extremes, previous studies have used empirical approach, event coincidence analysis, multivariate distribution, the indicator approach, quantile regression and the Markov Chain method to understand the dependence, greatly advancing the state of science of compound extremes. Overall, the selection of methods depends on the type of compound extremes of interests and relevant variables.

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Quantifying the impacts of compound extremes on agriculture

Cited by 72 publications

References 47 publications

Regional and elevational patterns of extreme heat stress change in the US

Regional and elevational patterns of extreme heat stress change in the US

Impacts of compound hot–dry extremes on US soybean yields

Compound Hydrometeorological Extremes: Drivers, Mechanisms and Methods

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