Spatial and temporal variation in weather events critical for boreal agriculture: I Elevated temperatures

Abstract

Variation in temperature challenges crop production and animal farming. Elevated temperatures are often harmful, though may also open opportunities at high latitudes. Impacts depend on the vulnerability of the object, production system and their resilience to climatic variability. The station-wise temperature observations from the Finnish Meteorological Institute for a time period of 54 years (1961‒2014) were interpolated to a regular 10 km × 10 km grid covering the whole country. Several successive time slices were used to measure the likelihood for: 1) elevated temperatures of a) ≥1 °C above normal for three weeks, b) ≥2 °C above normal for two weeks and c) ≥3 °C above normal for one week, and 2) heatwaves with daily maximum temperature >25 °C for: a) 5 days (short) or b) 14 days (long episode). We also estimated the likelihood of warm winds in the early growing season which may enhance pest migration. We found large spatial and temporal variations in the likelihoods of elevated temperatures with many impacts on crop production, animal farming and welfare. In fact, only 1 °C temperature elevation may already be harmful, though in some cases also beneficial depending on region and vulnerability or adaptation of the object and production system. Though we show only some examples of the potential impacts of temperature variation on high latitude agro-ecosystems, these data are valuable as such for much wider applications in agriculture and beyond that.