Science Alert July 5, 2023
Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions, but so far this has not been quantified. The ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. An international team of researchers (USA – Columbia University, Germany) has found an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models. While climate models accurately simulate atmospheric patterns, associated surface weather anomalies and negative effects on crop responses are mostly underestimated in bias-adjusted simulations. Given the identified model biases, future assessments of regional and concurrent crop losses from meandering jet states remain highly uncertain. According to the researchers their results suggest that model-blind spots for such high-impact, but deeply uncertain hazards must be anticipated and accounted for in meaningful climate risk assessments… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Major crop producing regions in the Northern Hemisphere… Credit: Nature Communications volume 14, Article number: 3528 (2023)