2°C global warming impacts in Europe

For the Impact2C project (Quantifying Projected Impacts Under 2°C Warming), AES used the EPIC model, forced by a set of future climate projections, to assess biophysical impacts of a mean global temperature increase by 2°C on agricultural systems and their services.

As well as evaluating common agricultural practices, AES studied a number of adaptation and mitigation options to counteract the negative effects of global warming at the pan-European scale.

Although quite a few studies on climate change impacts in the agricultural sector have been carried out, the impacts of global warming on agriculture are still highly uncertain, partly because of uncertainty in climate projections and modeling tools and the complexity of crop responses to climatic and management drivers.

Thus, in the IMPACT2C project, one of the goals was a detailed assessment of potential impacts using multiple crop models under detailed ensemble-based climate change scenarios. EPIC was used to quantify, in a spatially explicit manner, the 2°C warming impacts on crop yields, soil moisture, erosion, and soil organic carbon under conventional and alternative managements (see examples in the figure below).

Figure 1. 2°C warming impact on (a) winter wheat yields, and (b) average soil moisture under conventional crop cultivation; both compared to the 2000s.

Last edited: 22 May 2014