UC Irvine

Extreme weather and climate variability impose significant stress on the food production and distribution systems, already under pressure by increasing and shifting demands. In a globalized world economy with a highly interdependent network of food production and transmission systems, weather extremes cannot be regarded as local events anymore but rather as the triggering factors of a succession of downstream regional or even global impacts. Food and nutrition availability are national security issues, and the vulnerability of food distribution and nutrition supply systems are often assessed using metrics sensitive to local weather or climate events. Although informative, such metrics are often probabilistic and do not provide information on the local and nonlocal processes which drive changes in nutrition production, supply, and distribution. This study outlines frameworks for analyzing the interdependencies between countries' food systems, for quantifying change in nutritional value production and delivery due to weather extremes or climate variabilities, and for detecting changes in production capacities.