The Degrees Initiative has launched a $1.5m coordinated study on how solar radiation modification (SRM) may affect key crops worldwide, compared with the impacts of unabated climate change.
The agriculture study marks a new era in SRM research. For the first time, research teams in nine developing regions, plus China and the Global North, will use the same data, the same research protocols, and the same scenarios to explore how warming and SRM could affect staple crops.
This is the first in a planned series of global studies on issues most impacted by climate change. Agriculture was chosen as the first topic after consultation with researchers and policymakers across the Global South, who highlighted the pivotal role of staple crops in supporting livelihoods and food security.
“Climate intervention must ultimately be judged by what it means for water, crops and food security. Can cooling the climate secure the harvest on which vulnerable societies depend? That is the question our research seeks to answer.”
SRM is a potential mechanism for reducing some of the impacts of climate change by reflecting a small fraction of sunlight away from the Earth. Scientists are trying to understand whether SRM could help reduce the impacts of warming while humanity is eliminating greenhouse gas emissions.
Since 2018, Degrees has funded teams across the Global South to model how the physical impacts of SRM could affect their local climate. This has revealed, for example, how SRM could affect water cycles in South America, droughts in Southern Africa, and the spread of malaria in South Asia.
“This is what the future of SRM research should look like: a global partnership working together to evaluate one of the most important climate impacts.”
How it works
The new study will cover nine regions across the Global South: South America, Central America & Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Pacific Islands, East Africa, Southern Africa, West Africa, Middle East & North Africa, and South Asia.
To model the impacts of global warming and SRM on critical factors for agriculture – rainfall, temperatures and incoming solar radiation – good climate data is necessary. Climate models produce such data globally, but the Global South has lacked the computing power to process it and make it useful at local scales.
As part of a larger effort, project partners at the University of Cape Town and Cornell University will work with this data to ensure results from the Global North and South are comparable.
All regions will run models of the same future climate-change scenarios, with and without the use of SRM. The SRM scenarios will model the use of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), a proposed method that spreads small reflective particles throughout the upper atmosphere.
Each regional project will look at the impact of these modelled climates either on two staple crops – those defined as providing the majority of a population’s energy needs – or one staple crop and one that is economically important, such as coffee.
Projects
South America
- Principal Investigator: Andrés Aguilar Ariza, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
- Host country: Colombia
- Crops: maize and rice
Central America & Caribbean
- Principal Investigator: Roxann Stennett-Brown, University of the West Indies
- Host country: Jamaica
- Crops: cassava and maize
Southeast Asia (2 projects)
- Principal Investigator: Heri Kuswanto, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember
- Host country: Indonesia
- Crops: palm oil, coffee
– - Principal Investigator: Tao Li, International Rice Research Institute
- Host country: Philippines
- Crops: rice
Pacific Islands
- Principal Investigator: Viliamu Iese, University of Melbourne
- Host country: Solomon Islands / Australia
- Crops: taro and cassava
East Africa
- Principal Investigator: Franklin Joseph Opijah, University of Nairobi
- Host country: Kenya
- Crops: maize and sorghum
Southern Africa
- Principal Investigator: Chris Lennard, University of Cape Town
- Host country: South Africa
- Crops: maize and cassava
West Africa
- Principal Investigator: Vincent Olarenwaju Ajayi, Federal University of Technology Akure
- Host country: Nigeria
- Crops: maize and sorghum
Middle East & North Africa
- Principal Investigator: Victor Ongoma, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University
- Host country: Morocco
- Crops: Wheat and maize
South Asia
- Principal Investigator: Athar Hussain, COMSATS University Islamabad
- Host country: Pakistan
- Crops: Rice and wheat
Further quotes
Dale Rankine, University of the West Indies, lead crop modeller for Central America & Caribbean: “This Project is N³: New (in scope and focus), Novel (in approach and data application) and Needed (for climate change resilience, food and nutrition security). In two words, it’s a ‘game changer’!”
Athar Hussain, COMSATS University Islamabad, leading the South Asia project: “Agriculture is the backbone of South Asian countries. This agriculture project grant from the Degrees Initiative will help to not only integrate the impact assessment of SRM on staple crops in South Asia but also develop policy-relevant recommendations for national food security under SRM in changing climate of South Asia.”
Franklin Joseph Opijah, University of Nairobi, leading the East Africa project: “Agricultural production in eastern Africa is strongly influenced by seasonal rainfall and temperature variability that are likely to be aggravated by the changing climate, increasing the risk of crop failure, food insecurity, and loss of household income. Understanding the potential benefits and risks of SAI on the production of the main food crops in the region is critical.”
Chris Lennard, University of Cape Town, leading the Southern Africa project: “We are extremely excited to understand the impacts of climate change on cassava and maize in southern Africa and how SAI could potentially change these impacts, for better or worse. We are particularly interested to understand the timing at which critical productivity thresholds are exceeded under both climate change and SAI interventions for each crop and whether adaptation time could be gained through delayed threshold exceedance under SAI scenarios.”
Andrés Aguilar Ariza, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, leading the South America project: “Over two years we will produce vulnerability maps for maize and rice under stratospheric aerosol injection, using crop models validated against our own shading experiments and field trials. We hope they will show decision makers where this technology could help farmers, and where it could not.”
Tao Li, International Rice Research Institute, leading the rice modelling for Southeast Asia: “We hope to understand not simply whether rice yields change under SAI scenarios, but the mechanisms behind those changes – particularly the interacting effects of temperature, solar radiation, rainfall and water availability. Ultimately, we want this research to provide robust, transparent evidence about both potential benefits and risks for rice production and food security.”
