A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America finds that climate change will not only increase the risk of food shocks from world corn production but that these crop failures could occur simultaneously.
PRI reports that Michelle Tigchelaar, a research associate at the University of Washington, focused her study on two warming scenarios: One in which the global mean temperature rises by two degrees Celsius, which is roughly in line with the Paris Agreement targets, and a second scenario of a four-degree warming, which is the temperature rise the world could see by the end of this century if humanity fails to change the way it currently does things.
With two degrees of warming, corn yields would decline by 20% to 40% in the main growing regions on Earth; a four-degree-warmer world would see 40% to 60% yield declines.
Read the full report at PRI.
