Abstract: In order to feed the world we need innovative thinking on how to increase agricultural production whilst also mitigating climate change. Agriculture and land-use change are responsible for approximately one-third of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but hold potential for climate change mitigation but are only tangentially included in UNFCCC mitigation policies. To get a full estimate of GHG emissions from agricultural crop production both energy-based emissions and land-based emissions need to be accounted for. Furthermore, the major mitigation potential is likely to be indirect reduction of emissions i.e. reducing emissions per unit of agricultural product rather than the absolute emissions per se. Hence the system productivity must be included in the same analysis. This paper presents the Kaya-Porter identity, derived from the Maya identity, as a new way to calculate GHG emissions from agricultural crop production by deconstructing emissions into five elements; the GHG intensity of the energy used for production (kg CO2-eq./MJ), energy intensity of the production (MJ/kg dry matter), areal productivity (kg dry matter/ha), areal land-based GHG emissions (CO2-eq./ha) and area (ha). These separate elements in the identity can be targeted in emissions reduction and mitigation policies and are useful to analyse past and current trends in emissions and to explore future scenarios. Using the Kaya-Porter identity we have performed a case study on Danish crop production and find emissions to have been reduced by 12% from 1992 to 2008, whilst yields per unit area have remained constant. Both land-based emissions and energy-based emissions have decreased, mainly due to a 41% reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use. The initial identity based analysis for crop production presented here needs to be extended to include livestock to reflect the entire agricultural production and food demand sectors, thereby permitting analysis of the trade-offs between animal and plant food production, human dietary preferences and population and resulting GHG emissions. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: We present the integration of early 21st century climate projections for Europe based on simulations carried out within the EU-FP6 ENSEMBLES project with the LARS-WG stochastic weather generator. The aim was to upgrade ELPIS, a repository of local-scale climate scenarios for use in impact studies and risk assessments that already included global projections from the CMIP3 ensemble and regional scenarios for Japan. To obtain a more reliable simulation of daily rainfall and extremes, changes in wet and dry series derived from daily ENSEMBLES outputs were taken into account. Kernel average smoothers were used to reduce noise arising from sampling artefacts. Examples of risk analyses based on 25-km climate projections from the ENSEMBLES ensemble of regional climate models illustrate the possibilities offered by the updated version of ELPIS. The results stress the importance of tailored information for local-scale impact assessments at the European level.

Abstract: Climate projections indicate that rising temperatures will affect summer crops in the southern Iberian Peninsula. The aim of this study was to obtain projections of the impacts of rising temperatures, and of higher frequency of extreme events on irrigated maize, and to evaluate some adaptation strategies. The study was conducted at several locations in Andalusia using the CERES-Maize crop model, previously calibrated/validated with local experimental datasets. The simulated climate consisted of projections from regional climate models from the ENSEMBLES project; these were corrected for daily temperature and precipitation with regard to the E-OBS observational dataset. These bias-corrected projections were used with the CERES-Maize model to generate future impacts. Crop model results showed a decrease in maize yield by the end of the 21st century from 6 to 20%, a decrease of up to 25% in irrigation water requirements, and an increase in irrigation water productivity of up to 22%, due to earlier maturity dates and stomatal closure caused by CO2 increase. When adaptation strategies combining earlier sowing dates and cultivar changes were considered, impacts were compensated, and maize yield increased up to 14%, compared with the baseline period (1981-2010), with similar reductions in crop irrigation water requirements. Effects of extreme maximum temperatures rose to 40% at the end of the 21st century, compared with the baseline. Adaptation resulted in an overall reduction in extreme T-max damages in all locations, with the exception of Granada, where losses were limited to 8%.