Potential Effects of Future Climate Changes in Pest Scenario

Climate change with multifaceted stressors and impacts is among the defining challenges for ecological sciences, human beings, and planet Earth in the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, evidence of scientific literature on climate change and the quality of climate models for predicting future climatic changes has become sophisticated in recent decades; the account of altered pest dynamics on crop production and other ecological cycles due to climate change demands significant attention as well. In this chapter, we discussed how climate change such as elevated temperatures, high CO2 levels, and erratic precipitation patterns leading to droughts, floods, and other extreme weather conditions may influence pests’ populations. For instance, climate change can trigger changes such as the expansion of pest distribution in spatial and temporal bases, increased pest infestation intensity, crop yield loss, increased risk of invasive pest species occurrence, increased transmission of vector-borne diseases, reduced success of biological control, reduced efficacy of current integrated pest management strategies, and changes in pest population dynamics, pest biology and their physiology such as the number of generations, life cycle, changes in overwintering patterns, and extinction. Recent data and studies projecting the impacts of climate change on pest scenarios based on climatic models are discussed. We also highlighted the role of climate models and their significance in predicting the pest outbreak under the changing climate scenarios to mitigate the damage to some extent. The climate change effects are studied using observations and experiments over gradients of elevation, latitude, and urbanization. This chapter provides a theoretical basis and reference for crop improvement and pest management under future climate changes.