| 英文摘要: | Agriculture-focused integrated assessment models may be overstating the ability of poor countries to adapt to climate change. Empirical research can elucidate limits of adaptation in agricultural systems and help models better represent them. Producing enough food to satisfy the future demands of a growing world population is a challenge made all the more momentous by the vulnerability of agriculture to climate change. Projecting future crop yields and production at global scales and characterizing associated climatic risk are critically important. The workhorses of this research are biophysical process-based models, which simulate the growth and development of different crops at discrete locations, and integrated assessment models (IAMs), which simulate interactions between the climate and the economy using stylized representations of both systems. However, the resulting projections are only as good as the models themselves, especially when it comes to adaptation. In a forthcoming paper in Energy Economics, Thomas Hertel and David Lobell investigate1 how well models capture both the numerous pathways through which climate affects agriculture and the subsequent adjustments producers make to soften adverse effects. They find current models of tropical areas are generally wanting.
ROBERT HARDING WORLD IMAGERY/ALAMY
- Hertel, T. W. & Lobell. D. Energy Econ. (in the press).
- Porter, J. R. et al. in Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (eds Field, C. et al.) Ch. 7 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014).
- Challinor, A. J. et al. Nature Clim. Change 4, 287–291 (2014).
- http://go.nature.com/kLZ3cX
- Gourdji, S. M., Sibley, A. M. & Lobell, D. B. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 1–10 (2013).
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Affiliations
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Ian Sue Wing is in the Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Room 130, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA
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Enrica De Cian is at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore 8, 30124 Venice, Italy
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