Global Scale Climate-Crop Yield Relationships and the Impacts of Recent Warming

Newswise — IOP Publishing is pleased to announce the online publication of "Global scale climate-crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming" in the widely respected Environmental Research Letters. This study is the first to estimate how much global food production has already been affected by climate change.

Changes in the global production of major crops are important drivers of food prices, food security and land use decisions. During the years of 1981-2002, global warming reduced the combined production of wheat, corn and barley by 40 million metric tons per year. These cereal grains form the foundation of much of the world's diet. The study demonstrates that although many individuals see global warming as a problem of the future, warming over the past two decades has already had significant effects on global food supply.

The article appears in the current online edition and is available at the following link: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/2/1/014002.

"Global scale climate-crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming" is authored by Dr. David B Lobell of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, along with Dr. Christopher B Field of Carnegie Institution.

Environmental Research Letters is the world's first open-access journal to cover the whole of environmental science. Designed to serve the entire community by bringing together research, policy and business concerned with environmental change and management the journal offers a stimulating combination of research letters, perspectives, news items and job/conference announcements.

*To learn more about Environmental Research Letters please visit, http://erl.iop.org or contact Terri Morhaleck at 215-627-0880 or email to [email protected].

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