Abstract

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) peaked strongly during the boreal winter 2015–2016, leading to food insecurity in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Besides ENSO, the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are known to impact crop yields worldwide. Here we assess for the first time in a unified framework the relationships between ENSO, IOD and NAO and simulated crop productivity at the sub-country scale. Our findings reveal that during 1961–2010, crop productivity is significantly influenced by at least one large-scale climate oscillation in two-thirds of global cropland area. Besides observing new possible links, especially for NAO in Africa and the Middle East, our analyses confirm several known relationships between crop productivity and these oscillations. Our results improve the understanding of climatological crop productivity drivers, which is essential for enhancing food security in many of the most vulnerable places on the planet.

Details

Title
Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations
Author
Heino, Matias 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Puma, Michael J 2 ; Ward, Philip J 3   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Gerten, Dieter 4 ; Heck, Vera 5 ; Siebert, Stefan 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kummu, Matti 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

1  Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland 
2  Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY, USA; Center for Climate and Life, Columbia University, Palisdes, NY, USA 
3  Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 
4  Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Research Domain of Earth System Analysis, Potsdam, Germany; Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany 
5  Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland; Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Research Domain of Earth System Analysis, Potsdam, Germany 
6  Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation (INRES), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany; Department of Crop Sciences, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany 
Pages
1-10
Publication year
2018
Publication date
Mar 2018
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02071-5
ProQuest document ID
2019432854
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.