Connors, Janetos Present on Multiple Breadbasket Failure at AGU Meeting

Post-doctoral associate John Patrick Connors and Anthony Janetos, the Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, recently attended the 2016 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco, the largest Earth and space science meeting in the world. Connors presented their paper titled “Assessing the Impacts of Multiple Breadbasket Failures” at a session on climate impacts from extreme events.

The paper uses an Integrated Assessment Model, the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), to investigate the potential outcomes of shocks to agricultural productivity in the major breadbaskets of the world. Because a relatively small area of the world accounts for a large proportion of total global cereal production — primarily rice, wheat, and maize — the general consensus is that continued change in the physical climate will very likely make agricultural production more difficult. However, most research does not assess the impact of extreme events on agricultural production, and how these events affect food prices, food insecurity, land-use change, carbon emissions, and more. This model takes a multidimensional view of potential impacts, accounting for the interplay between the agricultural system and energy, transportation, and economic systems. The results, while only one aspect of calculating a risk profile, clearly demonstrate that there are likely to be multidimensional consequences from shocks that may be expected to occur with a rapidly changing climate system in coming decades.

Click here to learn more about the Pardee Center’s current research on climate impacts, food security, and multiple breadbasket failures.