08 Oct 2010 09:10:10

Climate change 'affecting harvests'

Crop failure could become a more common occurrence as climate change begins to take effect, new research shows.

A team made up of experts from the University of Leeds, the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter conducted the study, which concluded that the extreme weather events caused by climate change will lead to increasing numbers of crop failures.

Forest fires in Russia caused by heat and drought over the summer led to an area of crops larger than the size of Hungary being unusable.

Using spring wheat crops in northern China as the basis for the study, the researchers used a climate model to predict the weather patterns and assess how this would affect yields. Socio-economic factors related to the farmers were also taken into account.

Lead author Dr Andy Challinor, from the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, said that solutions must be found to the problem.

"It is highly unlikely that we will find a single intervention that is a 'silver bullet' for protecting crops from failure. What we need is an approach that combines building up crop tolerance to heath and water stress with socio-economic interventions," he added.

The study appears in Environmental Research Letters.