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An analysis of more than 1,700 simulations found that across all regions and all crops, including wheat, maize and rice, yields will drop by 2% each decade, based on a 2C rise by 2050. However, for some crops, the situation will be much worse, with wheat and maize in tropical areas experiencing a 40% decline if temperatures reach 5C warmer than pre-industrial levels.
Governments have agreed a target of limiting temperature rise to 2C above pre-industrial levels, although scientists warn the planet could experience a 4C or even 5C rise if carbon dioxide emissions are not drastically cut.
The report’s co-author Dr Mark Howden, of the CSIRO, said the situation was worse than previously thought. “We looked at a whole range of temperature and rainfall scenarios and found results that were distinctly far more negative than the previous IPCC report,” he said.
A wheatfield in Ukraine, near Lviv, shot by Raimond Spekking, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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