Abstract
Climate change is expected to increase the frequency, intensity and spatial extent of extreme climate events, and thus is a key concern for food production. However, food insecurity is usually analysed under a mean climate change state. Here we combine crop modelling and climate scenarios to estimate the effects of extreme climate events on future food insecurity. Relative to median-level climate change, we find that an additional 20–36% and 11–33% population may face hunger by 2050 under a once-per-100-yr extreme climate event under high and low emission scenarios, respectively. In some affected regions, such as South Asia, the amount of food required to offset such an effect is triple the region’s current food reserves. Better-targeted food reserves and other adaptation measures could help fill the consumption gap in the face of extreme climate variability.
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Data availability
The data used in the study are available at the Harvard Dataverse Repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KW2UEP
Code availability
The code used in the study is available at the Harvard Dataverse Repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KW2UEP
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20202002, JPMEERF20211001 and JPMEERF20182001) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan, Sumitomo Foundation and the Ritsumeikan Global Innovation Research Organization (R-GIRO), Ritsumeikan University.
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T.H., G.S., S.F., K.T. and T.M. designed the research. T.H. created figures and wrote the draft of the paper. G.S. performed the crop model experiments. T.H. and S.F. performed the economic model experiments and analysed the data. All authors discussed the results. T.H., G.S., S.F., K.T. and Y.H. contributed to writing the paper.
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Hasegawa, T., Sakurai, G., Fujimori, S. et al. Extreme climate events increase risk of global food insecurity and adaptation needs. Nat Food 2, 587–595 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00335-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00335-4
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