Climate analogs can catalyze cross-regional dialogs for US specialty crop adaptation

Communicating effectively about climate change and its effects on agriculture has been difficult in part because of the tendency to use generalities in place of specifics. Information about specific changes to the climate for a particular place can be effective in helping people to understand and make needed changes to agricultural practices. The authors of this paper took the view that specific information is better and used the idea of climate analogs, where individual counties are paired with the most probable existing counties, to give a sense of what the climate will be like and what crops are likely to grow in a future world. They initiated a dialogue by partnering with extension professionals for a set of 680 target specialty crop producing counties in the US so that crop specialty professionals can learn more about the practices and varieties of specific crops that are needed in future scenarios.