Scientists have already warned that climate change likely will impact the food we grow.
From rising global temperatures to more frequent “extreme” weather events like droughts and floods, climate change is expected to negatively affect our ability to produce food for a growing human population.
But new research is showing that climate change is expected to accelerate rates of crop loss due to the activity of another group of hungry creatures — insects. In a paper published Aug. 31 in the journal Science, a team led by scientists at the University of Washington reports that insect activity in today’s temperate, crop-growing regions will rise along with temperatures. Researchers project that this activity, in turn, will boost worldwide losses of rice, corn and wheat by 10-25 percent for each degree Celsius that global mean surface temperatures rise. Just a 2-degree Celsius rise in surface temperatures will push the total losses of these three crops each year to approximately 213 million tons.
“We expect to see increasing crop losses due to insect activity for two basic reasons,” said co-lead and corresponding author Curtis Deutsch, a UW associate professor of oceanography. “First, warmer temperatures increase insect metabolic rates exponentially. Second, with the exception of the tropics, warmer temperatures will increase the reproductive rates of insects. You have more insects, and they’re eating more.”
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Image via University of Washington
