Using insurance data to quantify the multidimensional impacts of warming temperatures on yield risk

Previous research predicts significant negative yield impacts from warming temperatures, but estimating the effects on yield risk and disentangling the relative causes of these losses remains challenging. Here we present new evidence on these issues by leveraging a unique publicly available dataset consisting of roughly 30,000 county-by-year observations on insurance-based measures of yield risk from 1989–2014 for U.S. corn and soybeans. Our results suggest that yield risk will increase in response to warmer temperatures, with a 1 °C increase associated with yield risk increases of approximately 32% and 11% for corn and soybeans, respectively. Using cause of loss information, we also find that additional losses under warming temperatures primarily result from additional reported occurrences of drought, with reported losses due to heat stress playing a smaller role. An implication of our findings is that the cost of purchasing crop insurance will increase for producers as a result of warming temperatures.