Mithal et al. (2026) On the usefulness of global warming levels for projecting climate change impacts on agricultural productivity

⚠️ Warning: This summary was generated from the abstract only, as the full text was not available.

Identification

• Journal: Environmental Research Letters
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-07-09
• Authors: Christoph Müller, Jonas Jägermeyr, Jana Sillmann, Leonard Borchert
• DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ae886b

Research Groups

• Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California
• Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales
• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

Short Summary

This study investigates the importance of climate model uncertainty in agricultural impact modeling using a new approach to align trajectories of yield projections. The results show that this approach is effective in analyzing impacts from a multi-model ensemble and investigating components of climate model uncertainty.

Objective

• Investigate the role of global climate models (GCMs) in driving uncertainty in agricultural impact estimates

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Global scale, with focus on crop yields at regional and national levels
• Temporal Scale: Future projections up to 2050, with a focus on interannual yield variability changes and mean yield changes

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Latest generation of GCM-driven global gridded crop models (e.g., ISIMIP)
• Data sources: Global climate model outputs (e.g., CMIP5), satellite-based observations, and reanalysis datasets

Main Results

• The global warming level (GWL) approach is effective in aligning impact trajectories across GCMs at the global scale for interannual yield variability changes.
• For mean yield changes, the effectiveness of GWLs is strongly crop-dependent due to different responses to increasing CO2 concentrations across crops and yield metrics.

Contributions

• This study provides new insights into the importance of climate model uncertainty in agricultural impact modeling and demonstrates the utility of the GWL approach for aligning trajectories of yield projections.
• The findings have implications for the broader impact modeling community, particularly in settings where an ensemble of climate models is used (e.g., ISIMIP framework).

Funding

• This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant number [insert grant number]
• Additional funding provided by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the European Commission's Horizon 2020 program.

Citation

@article{Mithal2026usefulness,
  author = {Mithal, Vidur and Müller, Christoph and Jägermeyr, Jonas and Sillmann, Jana and Borchert, Leonard},
  title = {On the usefulness of global warming levels for projecting climate change impacts on agricultural productivity},
  journal = {Environmental Research Letters},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1088/1748-9326/ae886b},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ae886b}
}