Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
variability. Droughts, floods, tropical cyclones, heavy
precipitation events, hot extremes and heat waves are
known to negatively impact agricultural production and
farmers' livelihood. The projected increase in these
events will result in greater instability in food production
and threaten the security of farmers' livelihoods.
•
Increasing glacier melt in the Himalayas will affect the
availability of irrigation, especially in the Indo-Gangetic
plains, which, in turn, could create negative consequences
for our food production.
•
Global warming in the short term is likely to favour agri-
cultural production in temperate regions (largely northern
Europe, North America) and negatively impact tropical
crop production (South Asia, Africa). This is likely to
have consequences on international food prices and trade
and, hence, our food security.
•
Small changes in temperature and rainfall could have a
significant effect on the quality of cereals, fruits, aro-
matic, and medicinal plants with resultant implications
on their prices and trade.
•
Pathogens and insect populations are strongly dependent
upon temperature and humidity. An increase in these
parameters will change their population dynamics result-
ing in a loss of yield.
•
Global warming could increase water, shelter and energy
requirement of livestock for meeting the projected milk
demands. Climate change is likely to aggravate the heat
stress in dairy animals, adversely affecting their produc-
tive and reproductive performance. A preliminary estimate
indicates that global warming is likely to lead to a loss of
1.6 million tonnes of milk production in India by 2020.
•
Increasing sea and river water temperature is likely to
affect fish breeding, migration and harvests. A rise in
temperature as small as 1°C could have important and
rapid effects on the mortality of fish and their geographi-
cal distributions. Oil sardine fishery did not exist before
1976 in the northern latitudes and along the east coast as
the resource was not available and sea surface tempera-
ture were not congenial. With the warming of sea surface,
the oil sardine is able to find temperature to its prefer-
ence, especially in the northern latitudes and eastern lon-
gitudes, thereby extending the distributional boundaries
and establishing fisheries in larger coastal areas.
