Human-induced climate change has decreased wheat production in northern Kazakhstan

Abstract

Northern Kazakhstan is a major wheat exporter, contributing to food security in Central Asia and beyond. However, wheat yields fluctuate and low-producing years occur frequently. It is currently unclear to what extent human-induced climate change contributes to this. The most severe low-producing year in this century was in 2010, which had severe consequences for the food security of wheat-importing countries. Here, we present a climate impact attribution study that quantifies the impact of human-induced climate change on the average wheat production and associated economic revenues in northern Kazakhstan in the 21st century and on the likelihood of a low-production year like 2010. The study uses bias-adjusted counterfactual and factual climate model data from two large ensembles of latest-generation climate models as input to a statistical subnational yield model. We consider the climate data and the yield model as fit for purpose as first, the factual climate simulations represent the observations, second, the out-of-sample validation of the yield model performs reasonably well with a mean R2 of 0.54, and third, the results are robust under the performed sensitivity tests. Human-induced climate change has had a critical impact on wheat production, specifically through increases in daily-minimum temperatures and extreme heat. This has resulted in a decrease in yields during 2000-2019 by approximately 6.2% to 8.2% (uncertainty range of two climate models) and an increased likelihood of the 2010 low-production event by 1.5 to 4.7 times (10th to 90th percentile uncertainty range covering both climate models). During 2000-2019, human-induced climate change caused economic losses estimated at between 96 and 180 million USD per year (10th to 90th percentile uncertainty range covering both climate models). These results highlight the necessity for ambitious global mitigation efforts and measures to adapt wheat production to increasing temperatures, ensuring regional and global food security.