Interactions Between Climate Mean and Variability Drive Future Agroecosystem Vulnerability.

ABSTRACT: Agriculture is crucial for global food supply and dominates the Earth's land surface. It is unknown, however, how slow but relentless changes in climate mean state, versus random extreme conditions arising from changing variability, will affect agroecosystems' carbon fluxes, energy fluxes, and crop production. We used an advanced weather generator to partition changes in mean climate state versus variability for both temperature and precipitation, producing forcing data to drive factorial-design simulations of US Midwest agricultural regions in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model. We found that an increase in temperature mean lowers stored carbon, plant productivity, and crop yield, and tends to convert agroecosystems from a carbon sink to a source, as expected; it also can cause local

SUBMITTER: Sinha E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11803497 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature