Climate change impacts in agriculture and possible responses

Abstract

It is evident that climate change is one of the most serious problems we face in the 21st century. Considering the possible changes we have to answer many questions in order to prepare for the future. Using geographical analogues it is shown that the possible future climate in Hungary would be similar to the present climate of South-Southeast Europe. In the case of crops phenophases could become shorter. We traced the possible changes of production risk, expected yield and phenology of maize and winter wheat. In our research we have used six climate scenarios and the historical meteorological data of their reference period. We have proved that the risk of maize and winter wheat production has increased. We examined the frequencies of extreme temperature values during the growing season, as well. We have shown that the quality of winter wheat might be better in the near future and that with appropriate adaptation strategy we can benefit from climate change. Next we analyzed how the yield and the length of the phenological phases of the plants are expected to change. Modeling is a useful tool for investigation of the future circumstances without having expensive and long experiments. The simulations were run by the 4M crop model. It can be stated that, as a result of temperature increase, the starting points of the phenological phases are expected to shift a day earlier in ten years, on average. We have also used the model for finding an adaptive strategy for increasing the yield with changing the sowing date. The results are very promising in case of the two weeks earlier sowing date, which may suggest new prospects in land use, too. Studies about climate change impacts in agriculture are needed very much in order to find adaptive response strategies.