Climate Change and its Impact on Agricultural Productivity in India

Copyright: © 2014 Kumar R et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Climate change has a serious impact on the availability of various resources on the earth especially water, which sustains life on this planet. Changes in the biosphere, biodiversity and natural resources are adversely affecting human health and quality of life. Throughout the 21stcentury, India is projected to experience warming above global level. India will also begin to experience more seasonal variation in temperature with more warming in the winters than summers. Longevity of heat waves across India has extended in recent years with warmer night temperatures and hotter days, and this trend is expected to continue. The average temperature change is predicted to be 2.33°C-4.78°C with a doubling in CO2 concentrations. These heat waves will lead to increased variability in summer monsoon precipitation, which will result in drastic effects on the agriculture sector in India. Climate models predict a gradual rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and temperature across the globe. These models, however, are not very precise in predicting future changes in local weather conditions. Local weather conditions such as rain, temperature, sunshine and wind, in combination with locally adapted plant varieties, cropping systems, and soil conditions can maximize food production as long as plant diseases can be controlled