Resilience of UK crop yields to compound climate change

Slater, Louise J.; Huntingford, Chris; Pywell, Richard F.; Redhead, John W.; Kendon, Elizabeth J.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1377-2022

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1377-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-1377-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 3

Research article

|

29 Sep 2022

Research article |

| 29 Sep 2022

Resilience of UK crop yields to compound climate change

Louise J. Slater, Chris Huntingford, Richard F. Pywell, John W. Redhead, and Elizabeth J. Kendon

Data sets

HadUK-Grid – A new UK dataset of gridded climate observations (https://dap.ceda.ac.uk/badc/ukmo-hadobs/data/insitu/MOHC/HadOBS/HadUK-Grid/) D. Hollis, M. McCarthy, M. Kendon, T. Legg, and I. Simpson https://doi.org/10.1002/gdj3.78

UKCP Convection-permitting model projections, Science report, Met Office Hadley Centre (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/approach/collaboration/ukcp/data/index) E. Kendon, G. Fosser, J. Murphy, S. Chan, R. Clark, G. Harris, A. Lock, J. Lowe, G. Martin, J. Pirret, N. Roberts, M. Sanderson, and S. Tucker https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/ukcp18/science-reports/UKCP-Convection-permitting-model-projections-report.pdf

Short summary

This work considers how wheat yields are affected by weather conditions during the three main wheat growth stages in the UK. Impacts are strongest in years with compound weather extremes across multiple growth stages. Future climate projections are beneficial for wheat yields, on average, but indicate a high risk of unseen weather conditions which farmers may struggle to adapt to and mitigate against.