Vulnerability of sorghum production to extreme, sub-seasonal weather under climate change

In the tropics, extreme weather associated with global climate teleconnections can have an outsized impact on food security. In Ethiopia, the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is frequently linked to drought-induced food insecurity. Many projections hold that El Nino events will become more frequent or more intense under climate change, suggesting that El Nino associated droughts may become more destructive. Agricultural vulnerability to extremes under climate change, however, is a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Sensitivity, in this context, can depend on sub-seasonal distribution of rainfall. This paper investigates crop sensitivity to sub-seasonal rainfall variability under climate change in a food insecure area of the Ethiopian highlands through analysis of process-oriented crop model results for the years 1981-2100 driven by 14 GCMs chosen for the ability to represent ENSO and rainfall characteristics of the study area. Further, adaptive capacity in the region is investigated with in-depth interviews and focus groups concerning the 2015 strong El Nino event. Crop model results for sorghum highlight that exposure and sensitivity to sub-seasonal extremes of low rainfall can diverge significantly from sorghum's response to seasonal drought. Even though climate change will bring generally warmer and wetter seasons to the study area, there is an increased occurrence of sub-seasonal failure of rains early in the rainy season which will likely have negative impacts on sorghum yield. In-depth interviews show that biophysical constraints significantly reduce farmer adaptive capacity to this type of sub-seasonal extreme. This work highlights the need to consider sub-seasonal weather when assessing climate change threats to agriculture, particularly for subsistence farmers in the developing world.