A model predicts how climate change may affect cereal yields

By the end of the century, climate change will likely cause a decline of wheat and barley yields by 17 to 33 percent. Those were the findings of a new statistical model by the University of California, Davis. Matthew Gammans, a graduate student who worked on the study, says it was based on 65 years of weather records and data from wheat and barley yields in France. "So we started by looking at the relationship between weather and yields and then using some climate change projections, we forecasted that relationship into the future to see what we can expect to happen to these yields." Their work is one of the first flexible statistical models applied to wheat and other cereal crops. "When I say “flexible”, I mean not just kind of the average temperature or the max temperature, but kind of looking at exposure to every temperature bin, so every potential temperature is included in the analysis and it’s the first to apply that to Europe and it’s also the first to use that kind of flexible methodology to look at both fall and winter and summer seasons – so really trying to understand what’s driving these yield changes."