Our doctoral candidate Matias Heino and Assistant Professor Matti Kummu examined the impacts of global climate oscillation on food production. The article “Two-thirds of global cropland area impacted by climate oscillations” was just published in Nature Communications.

Heino et al. concentrated on studying The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and their relationships with simulated crop productivity at the sub-country scale.

The results emphasize how the crop productivity was significantly influenced by at least one large-scale climate oscillation in two-thirds of global cropland area between year 1961-2010. This work contributes to increased understanding of climatological crop productivity drivers, thus enhancing food security in many of the most vulnerable places on the planet.

 

Matias Heino is a doctoral candidate in WDRG. His work concentrates on the susceptibility of the global food production system to climate related shocks.