Global Climate Change Effects on Agricultural Production in Eastern Asia

The main objective of this study is to investigate the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity in East Asia. Our study area includes China, Japan, and Korea. Paleoclimatic data and historical climate records are used to gain understanding of how the past climate variability in East Asia has shaped the present-day climate and environment. The IPCC AR4 reports, agricultural statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization, temperature and precipitation data, and remote sensing data are analyzed in order to establish impacts of climatic trends on agricultural crops. In addition, climate change scenarios generated with MAGICC SCENGEN 5.2 climate model and several MMD studies are used to generate climate change and agricultural productivity scenarios for this region. The project tests our hypothesis suggesting that the projected temperature increases would result in the decrease of the amount of agricultural production in East Asia