Environmental News Network - Climate Change ‘Could Slash Brazil’s Maize Yields’

Details: By SciDev.Net; 16.Apr

Changes in temperature and rainfall could drastically reduce maize yields by the end of the century in northeast Brazil, one of the country's poorest and most vulnerable regions, environmental experts warn.

Julie Swatson

Changes in temperature and rainfall could drastically reduce maize yields by the end of the century in northeast Brazil, one of the country's poorest and most vulnerable regions, environmental experts warn.

A study to be published in May in the journal Agricultural Water Management simulated the potential impact of climate change on maize yields in northeast Brazil in two possible climatic scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In the most optimistic, greenhouse gas emissions would stop increasing by the 2040s and the rise in average temperature in Brazil would vary from 0.3º to 1.7ºC up to the year 2100.

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Climate Change ‘Could Slash Brazil’s Maize Yields’