Future hail risk to wheat production in Europe under climate change

Hailstorms pose a significant threat to crop production and can cause substantial economic losses to farmers. Climate change is expected to have an impact on hail risk, but the question of whether and where risk will increase or decrease is still a matter of debate, in particular, because little is known about how changes in hail season and frequency interact with earlier harvest dates of crops under global warming.
In this contribution, we examine future hail risks to wheat production in Europe using a novel set of high-resolution climate simulations that target a 3°C global warming scenario. The simulations were carried out with the COSMO climate model, which was operated at 2.2 km spatial resolution. The hail growth model HAILCAST was embedded within COSMO to simulate hail activity, and a crop phenology model was run with COSMO outputs to calculate wheat harvest time. The results highlight climate change induced variations in wheat exposure and sensitivity to hail events across different regions. The patterns revealed by the results range from a decrease in hail risk due to less hail activity during the hail season (e.g. at selected locations in Spain) to a sharp increase in hail risk despite earlier harvest dates due to significantly more hail activity (e.g. at selected locations in Germany), with interim results depending of geographic location and climate change signal.
By integrating high-resolution climate simulations with a crop phenology model, this work bridges the gap between agriculture production sciences and climate risk assessments and offers valuable insights into future risks of hail damage to European agriculture, thus providing a baseline for informing adaptation to climate change.