In US Grain Basket, Drought Bears Down and Bores In

Inspired by the climate denial moron that sent me a Tik Tok this morning, that he thought proved once and for all that “CO2 is good for plants”, proving once again that climate deniers stopped paying attention to science class in third grade, but that climate denial memes, even those from 1992, last forever.
Note to deniers, my “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” playlist is here, please review before you post, to avoid embarrassment.. Your objections were all answered decades ago.

NASA:

Climate change may affect the production of maize (corn) and wheat as early as 2030 under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario, according to a new NASA study published in the journal, Nature Food. Maize crop yields are projected to decline 24%, while wheat could potentially see growth of about 17%.

Using advanced climate and agricultural models, scientists found that the change in yields is due to projected increases in temperature, shifts in rainfall patterns, and elevated surface carbon dioxide concentrations from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. These changes would make it more difficult to grow maize in the tropics, but could expand wheat’s growing range.

“We did not expect to see such a fundamental shift, as compared to crop yield projections from the previous generation of climate and crop models conducted in 2014,” said lead author Jonas Jägermeyr, a crop modeler and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. The projected maize response was surprisingly large and negative, he said. “A 20% decrease from current production levels could have severe implications worldwide.”

Below, this week’s report from Farm Journal:

MIT:

Although plants need carbon dioxide to grow, their success in very high-carbon environments is not guaranteed. Not all plants like extra carbon equally. And for those carbon aficionados in the plant kingdom, CO₂ is not the only factor that controls growth. As any aspiring green thumb knows, plants need the right balance of water and soil nutrients to translate extra carbon dioxide into growth.

This is a problem, given the way our climate is trending. Climate change, driven by excessive CO₂ in the atmosphere, deepens droughts in places like the American West. That reduces the water supply for plants there while simultaneously increasing the risk of catastrophic wildfires. In other places, plants will have to cope with more frequent disasters like flooding and heat stress, exposure to saltwater from rising seas, and an increase in pests that enjoy warmer winters.

And though planting millions of additional trees is one popular idea often floated for pulling some CO₂ out of the atmosphere, it is not clear that the world would have enough nutrients in the soil to allow for such growth.

That’s bad news for plants, and for people hoping for some relief from climate change. So is the fact that the process of respiration, when plants release some of their stored CO₂, happens faster under hotter conditions. “That’s the real devil in a lot of these carbon sequestration conversations,” Des Marais says. “It’s one thing to get the carbon out of the air and into the trees or soil, but it has to stay there. And if you increase temperature, you tend to increase respiration.”