NSF Convergence Accelerator Track J: Predicting the effect of climate extremes on the food system to improve resilience of global and local food security

随着我们进入第三个由拉尼娜事件驱动的创纪录极端天气的年份，美国和全球面临饥饿的人数惊人。气候冲击、价格上涨和冲突的致命组合已将5000多万人推向饥荒的边缘，凸显了我们全球粮食系统的脆弱性。对粮食系统的冲击不是孤立的，可能会级联。例如，气候冲击往往是相互关联的，同时冲击世界各地的多个生产地区，导致粮食价格上涨，可能导致一些国家实施出口禁令，推动全球价格进一步上涨。幸运的是，相关的气候冲击越来越可预测。在过去二十年中，我们对受海洋表面温度影响的极端高温、干旱和暴雨的预测能力大幅提高。该项目利用这种预测能力与粮食系统的利益相关者沿着合作，开发适合他们需求和决策点的可操作模型。 理解和预测全球粮食系统对可预测的气候冲击的脆弱性至关重要。它将使政府机构和援助团体能够缓解粮食危机，并帮助美国和国外的社区建立复原力。这种趋同研究有两个主要目标。首先，它将创建预测模型，说明粮食安全驱动因素之间的相互联系。虽然存在作物生产、气象预报、价格、贸易和家庭粮食安全的模型，但这些模型目前缺乏互操作性，这意味着这些模型不容易在整个系统中永久存在反馈、相互作用或不确定性措施。开发综合模型需要多学科融合科学方法，将气候学家、水文学家、社会学家、农业经济学家、统计学家和政策专家聚集在一起，对相关冲击及其在粮食系统中的联系进行适当建模。第二，为了产生可操作的产出，这些模型需要从一开始就与利益攸关方共同开发。利益攸关方将指导模型的投入、目标、设想方案，并帮助设计其产出。研究人员将与决策者合作，共同制作模型，量化气候冲击对当地和全球粮食生产，贸易和价格的影响，并列举家庭和地区对这些冲击的脆弱性。该项目将加强我们对综合模型每个组成部分中驱动因素的理解，例如加强我们对海洋表面温度和气候之间联系的理论理解，全球粮食贸易体系的关键节点，以及特定粮食安全驱动因素组合的影响。沿着改进每个单独的模型组件，该项目将促进它们的相互作用，提高我们识别天气与国际贸易和价格相关性的能力，同时更仔细地考虑不确定性。 为了支持在其他领域采用这种方法开发模型，该项目将为决策者共同制作模型制定协议。通过将学者与从事国际和国内粮食安全工作的重要现实世界决策者聚集在一起，该项目将有助于确定在发展中国家和发达国家不同环境中相关的饥饿驱动因素。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As we enter a third year of record extreme weather driven by a La Niña event, a staggering number of people are facing hunger in the United States and globally. A deadly combination of climate shocks, price increases and conflict have pushed 50+ million people to the edge of famine, highlighting the vulnerability of our global food system. Shocks to the food system are not isolated and can cascade. For example, climate shocks are often correlated, hitting multiple production areas around the world at the same time, resulting in food price hikes that can lead some countries to impose export bans, driving global prices even higher. Fortunately, correlated climate shocks are increasingly predictable. Our ability to forecast extreme heat, drought and heavy rains, driven by sea surface temperatures, has increased dramatically over the past two decades. This project leverages that predictive ability to collaborate with stakeholders along the food system to develop actionable models tailored to their needs and decision-points. Understanding, and anticipating, the vulnerability of the global food system to predictable climate shocks is critical. It will allow government agencies and aid groups to mitigate food crises and help communities build resiliency both in the United States and abroad. This convergence research has two primary objectives. First, it will create predictive models that account for interlinkages across food security drivers. While models for crop production, meteorological forecasts, price, trade, and household food security exist, their current lack of interoperability means that the models do not readily allow for feedbacks, interactions or measures of uncertainty to be perpetuated throughout the system. Developing an integrated model requires a multidisciplinary convergence science approach, bringing together climatologists, hydrologists, sociologists, agricultural economists, statisticians and policy experts to appropriately model correlated shocks and their connections through the food system.Second, to produce actionable output, these models need to be co-developed with stakeholders from the beginning. Stakeholders will guide model inputs, objectives, scenarios and help design their output. The researchers will work with decision-makers to co-produce models that quantify the effects of climate shocks on local and global food production, trade and prices, and enumerate the vulnerability of the households and regions to these shocks. This project will enhance our understanding of the drivers within each component of the integrated model, such as bolstering our theoretical understanding of the linkages between sea surface temperatures and climate, key nodes in the global food trade system, and the effect of combinations of specific food security drivers. Along with improving each separate model component, this project will facilitate their interaction, improving our ability to identify the correlation of weather to international trade and prices while more carefully accounting for uncertainty. To support the adoption of this approach to model development in other fields, the project will develop protocols for decision-maker coproduction of models. By bringing together academics with consequential real-world decision-makers working on both international and domestic food security, this project will help identify drivers of hunger that are relevant in different settings within developing and developed countries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.