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Waldhoff, Stephanie

Publications and source records attributed to Waldhoff, Stephanie.

The impact of climate change on Korea’s agricultural sector under the national self-sufficiency policy

Evolving environmental conditions due to climate change have brought about changes in agriculture, which is required for human life as both a source of food and income. International trade can act as a buffer against potential negative impacts of climate change on crop yields, but recent years have seen breakdowns in global trade, including export bans to improve domestic food security. For countries that rely heavily on imported food, governments may institute policies to protect their agricultural industry from changes in climate-induced crop yield changes and other countries’ potential trade restrictions. This study assesses the individual and combined effects of climate impacts and food self-sufficiency policies in Korea, which is highly dependent on imports. We use the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM), a global integrated assessment model, to explore (1) the direct impact of climate change on Korea’s agricultural yields, (2) the full impacts of global climate change on agricultural production, including trade-induced changes due to yield changes in other regions, (3) the impacts of food self-sufficiency policy, and (4) the interactive impact of climate change and self-sufficiency policies. We find that, in Korea, the direct impact of climate change on agricultural yields would be overshadowed by the impact of global climate change due to changing trade patterns. Second, global climate change leads to a rise (rice and wheat) or a decline (soybeans) in Korean producer revenues, while simultaneously raising consumer expenditures on both staples and non-staples. Third, implementing self-sufficiency policies for wheat and soybeans in Korea boosts the nation’s producer revenues, in conjunction with the effects of climate change, at the cost of additional increases in consumer expenditures for both staples and non-staples.

Science & Technology - Other Topics↗

Agriculture, bioenergy, and water implications of constrained cereal trade and climate change impacts

International trade increases connections and dependencies between countries, weaving a network of global supply chains. Agricultural commodity trade has implications for crop producers, consumers, crop prices, water and land uses, and other human systems. Interconnections among these systems are not always easy to observe when external impacts penetrate across multiple sectors. To better understand the interactions of non-linear and globally coupled agricultural-bioenergy-water systems under the broader economy, we introduce systematic perturbations in two dimensions, one human (restrictions on agricultural trade) and the other physical (climate impacts on crop yields). We explore these independently and in combination to distinguish the consequences of individual perturbation and interactive effects in long-term projections. We show that most regions experience larger changes in cereal consumption due to cereal import dependency constraints than due to the impacts of climate change on agricultural yields. In the scenario where all regions ensure an import dependency ratio of zero, the global trade of cereals decreases ~50% in 2050 compared to the baseline, with smaller decreases in cereal production and consumption (4%). The changes in trade also impact water and bioenergy: global irrigation water consumption increases 3% and corn ethanol production decreases 7% in 2050. Climate change results in rising domestic prices and declining consumption of cereal crops in general, while the import dependency constraint exacerbates the situation in regions which import more cereals in the baseline. The individual and interactive effects of trade perturbations and climate change vary greatly across regions, which are also affected by the regional ability to increase agricultural production through intensification or extensification.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Ratcheting of climate pledges needed to limit peak global warming

We report the new and updated emission reduction pledges submitted by countries ahead of the Twenty-Sixth Conference of Parties represent a meaningful strengthening of global ambition compared to the 2015 Paris pledges. Yet, limiting global warming below 1.5 °C this century will require countries to ratchet ambition for 2030 and beyond. Here, we explore a suite of emissions pathways to show that ratcheting near-term ambition through 2030 will be crucial to limiting peak temperature changes. Delaying ratcheting ambition to beyond 2030 could still deliver end-of-century temperature change of less than 1.5 °C but would result in higher temperature overshoot over many decades with the potential for adverse consequences. Ratcheting near-term ambition would also deliver benefits from enhanced non-CO2 mitigation and facilitate faster transitions to net-zero emissions systems in major economies.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The path to 1.5 °C requires ratcheting of climate pledges

Using model simulations of high-ambition emissions pathways, we show that ratcheting—or increasing—climate ambition through 2030 will be crucial to limiting global peak temperature changes this century. Although updated pledges offered in advance of the Glasgow climate conference in 2021 meaningfully strengthened global ambition in 2030 compared to the 2015 Paris pledges, here, our study underscores the importance of countries ratcheting their 2030 pledges further to reduce the magnitude of temperature overshoot and consequently reduce the risks of irreversible and adverse consequences to natural and human systems.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

hectorui: A web-based interactive scenario builder and visualization application for the Hector climate model

In a world of increasingly online, distributed, and diverse interdisciplinary research, there is a need to provide accessible and user-friendly interactive visualization tools that elucidate complex models and their output products. Hector UI is an R Shiny web interface built to extend the simple global climate model Hector (Hartin et al. 2015), originally designed in C++ with an accompanying R interface. Traditionally, Hector has only had a command line interface available which requires fluency in C++ or R and a full understanding of Hector’s parameter space to run the model and create output. Hector UI provides a fast, efficient solution that makes the model more accessible to a broader user base. This implementation allows users that may not be fluent in R or C++ to interactively explore model scenarios and outputs in an easy to use, guided point and click interface.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

The domestic and international implications of future climate for U.S. agriculture in GCAM

Agriculture yields are susceptible to changes in future temperature, precipitation, and other Earth system factors. Future changes to these physical Earth system attributes and their effects on agricultural yields are highly uncertain. United States agricultural producers will be affected by such changes whether they occur domestically or internationally (via international commodity markets). How important to U.S. agriculture are domestic changes due to climate compared to those occurring externally? Here we show that potential direct impacts to United States agriculture have financial impacts on U.S. producers that are roughly similar in magnitude but opposite in sign to impacts on U.S. producers due to changes in other parts of the world. This finding is robust across application of a wide range of potential future crop yield impacts applied to a multi-sector global integrated assessment model. Therefore, when examining country-specific impacts, it is necessary to model both the domestic and international impacts.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗