Impact of climate change on storage conditions for major agricultural commodities across the contiguous United States
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Impact of climate change on storage conditions for major agricultural commodities across the contiguous United States Kyle Lesinger 1 & Di Tian 1
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& Courtney P. Leisner & Alvaro Sanz-Saez
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Received: 19 August 2020 / Accepted: 15 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Changes in postharvest storage conditions due to climate change can directly affect energy usage and food supply and quality. However, no study has assessed climate change impacts on postharvest storage conditions in different climate regions over the contiguous United States (CONUS), a major agricultural producer around the world. The goal of this study is to assess the impact of climate change on cold storage conditions for the highest grossing crop for each of the nine climate regions within the CONUS. Storage degree days (SDDs) accumulate when ambient temperatures increase relative to crop storage base temperatures. Changes in SDDs and winter subperiod length were calculated for each regional crop using historical climate data and 20 downscaled global climate model projections. All regions project significant increases in SDD accumulation and decreases in winter subperiod length when compared with the historical reference period (1979–2005). Between years 2020 and 2080, Northwest and Northeast regions’ apples will be impacted most by SDD accumulation with yearly increases between 261 and 1004 SDDs. Between years 2020 and 2080, Midwest regions’ potatoes are projected to lose the most days of winter (24–39 days), and Southeast regions’ peanuts will experience the greatest decrease in winter length (17–23%). Increases in SDD accumulation and decreases in winter length will have direct implications on future food supply and storage costs. This study is the first comprehensive analysis of climate change impacts on the storage conditions for agricultural commodities over heterogenous climate conditions at national scale, providing useful information for long-term agricultural storage planning. Keywords Climate change . Postharvest crop storage . Storage degree days . Agricultural commodities . Contiguous United States
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-02002873-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Di Tian [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
1 Introduction Increased ambient land temperatures due to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations have the potential to threaten the entire food supply chain beginning with crop development and yield (Cammarano and Tian 2018; Chin et al. 2018; Raymundo et al. 2018; Singh et al. 2017), through food cold chain transport (James and James 2010), and into postharvest long-term storage (Winkler et al. 2018). Increased growing season temperatures and time of harvest have the potential to directly affect crop integrity and postharvest processing and storage, which both ultimately affect crop quality (Mutegi et
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