Land-atmosphere interactions and agricultural climate impacts

Agricultural climate impact projections routinely rely upon temperature-based statistical models to characterize historical variability and project future crop yields, and exposure to extremely hot temperatures is associated with severe crop losses. However, high temperatures over land can be strongly influenced by land surface conditions, including shifts in evapotranspiration arising from variations in vegetation productivity and soil moisture. This talk will highlight the ways in which such land-atmosphere interactions should be considered in agricultural climate impact assessments. I will show how crop intensification of both rainfed and irrigated production modified extreme temperature trends in the US and around the world. I will then show how the coupling between soil moisture and temperatures can bias climate impact projections based solely on temperature. Shifts in soil moisture-temperature coupling will be examined using earth system models.