Temporal Analysis of Adverse Weather Conditions Affecting Wheat Production in Finland

Growing conditions of agricultural crops are increasingly affected by global climate change. Not only the overall agro-climatic conditions are changing, but also climatic variability and the occurrence of extreme weather events are becoming more frequent. This will affect crop yields and impact food supply both locally and globally. Located in the north, with short growing seasons and long days, Finland is not an exception. Drought- and temperature-related adverse events have been identified as most harmful abiotic factors on the production. Farmers try to mitigate with a range of management options. However, they need to adapt them over time as the climate is changing. This study aims to identify the most adverse weather events that affect the spring wheat production in Finland and to ascertain if there have been changes on the most harmful abiotic weather-related factors during the last decades. Adverse weather conditions studied include frequency and length of periods with exceptional snow, drought, intensive rainfall and extreme heat. This was studied by modeling the wheat production using the adverse weather events as predictors with different lengths of training period (consecutive number of years) using LASSO regression. The results reveal clear shift from early season drought and periodical intensive rainfall to the adverse effects of frequent and long periods of extremely high temperatures during later development stages.