Measuring exposure of agriculture to observed temperature change

Abstract. We used available FAO statistics as input metrics to compute simple indicators of exposure of agriculture at regional and global levels to temperature change thresholds, ΔT > 1.5 °C and ΔT > 2.0 °C, relative the 1951–1980 climatology. Since 1995 and with respect to ΔT > 1.5 °C, results show that exposure of rural populations increased globally 14 times (from 64 to 920 million people); exposed agricultural land area grew five-fold (from 350 to 2000 million hectare, Mha). The exposed harvested area of soybean increased globally 90 times (0.5 to 45 Mha); rice 78 times (0.5 to 39 Mha); maize 38 times (2 to 76 Mha) and wheat 5 times (22 to 110 Mha). Finally, exposure of livestock grew six-fold for dairy cows and 20-fold for chicken broilers. Among regions, Europe had the largest exposure to ΔT > 1.5 °C, with more than 80 % of its rural population, cropland area, dairy cattle, maize and wheat harvested areas exposed in 2024. Exposure indicators for Central Asia, Western Asia and Northern Africa were above 65 % for cropland area and wheat harvested area. The computed exposure indicators were found to increase nearly exponentially over the period 1961–2024 across all regions, highlighting the urgency of implementing appropriate agricultural adaptation strategies to avert possible negative impacts in coming decades. The data is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12665841 (Tubiello, 2025).