The fingerprint of climate trends on European crop yields

Europe has experienced a stagnation of some crop yields since the early 1990s as well as statistically significant warming during the growing season. Although it has been argued that these two are causally connected, no previous studies have formally attributed long-term yield trends to a changing climate. Here, we present two statistical tests based on the distinctive spatial pattern of climate change impacts and adaptation, and explore their power under a range of parameter values. We show that statistical power for the identification of climate change impacts is high in many settings, but that power for identifying adaptation is almost always low. Applying these tests to European agriculture, we find evidence that long-term temperature and precipitation trends since 1989 have reduced continent-wide wheat and barley yields by 2.5% and 3.8%, respectively, and have slightly increased maize and sugar beet yields. These averages disguise large heterogeneity across the continent, with regions around the Mediterranean experiencing significant adverse impacts on most crops. This result means that climate trends can account for similar to 10% of the stagnation in European wheat and barley yields, with likely explanations for the remainder including changes in agriculture and environmental policies.