Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation

Climate change threatens global food systems1, but the extent to which adaptation will reduce losses remains unknown and controversial2. Even within the well-studied context of US agriculture, some analyses argue that adaptation will be widespread and climate damages small3,4, whereas others conclude that adaptation will be limited and losses severe5,6. Scenario-based analyses indicate that adaptation should have notable consequences on global agricultural productivity7–9, but there has been no systematic study of how extensively real-world producers actually adapt at the global scale. Here we empirically estimate the impact of global producer adaptations using longitudinal data on six staple crops spanning 12,658 regions, capturing two-thirds of global crop calories. We estimate that global production declines 5.5 × 1014 kcal annually per 1 °C global mean surface temperature (GMST) rise (120 kcal per person per day or 4.4% of recommended consumption per 1 °C; P