Smartphones already allow farmers in remote areas to snap photos of sick plants, upload them and get a quick diagnosis, plus advice on treatment.

Researchers also are trying to train crops like maize and wheat to produce their own nitrogen fertilizer from the air — a trick soybeans and other legumes use — and exploring how to make wheat and rice better at photosynthesis in very hot conditions.

As warmer, wilder weather linked to climate change brings growing challenges for farmers across the globe — and as they try to curb their own heat-trapping emissions — a rush of innovation aimed at helping both rich and poor farmers is now converging in ways that could benefit them all, scientists say.

In a hotter world, farmers share “the same problems, the same issues”, said Svend Christensen, head of plant and environmental sciences at the University of Copenhagen.

Agricultural researchers, who have teamed up to boost harvests and fight the major blight of wheat rust are now forming an international consortium in a bid to make wheat stand up to worsening heat and drought.

“There was a real shift in terms of the intensity of what we do together when we became aware of climate change,” said Hans-Joachim Braun, who heads the global wheat program for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), based in Mexico.

For each one degree Celsius global temperatures rise above pre-industrial times, wheat harvests drop five to eight per cent, he said.

That means the world will likely see a 10 per cent drop in harvests even if governments hold global warming to “well below” 2 C, as they have agreed, he said — and that drop would come even as the world’s population grows and demand for food rises.

Finding ways to breed wheat that can cope better with heat could help farmers from Australia to India and China, as well as the people who depend on their grain, he said.

“It doesn’t matter where you use this trait — it will have an impact,” Braun said.

One idea scientists are working on is to fundamentally reshape how crops such as wheat and rice carry out photosynthesis, to make them better able to continue producing in hot weather, especially if less water is available.

The process — like efforts to help wheat and maize start making their own fertilizer — is hugely complex and will likely require decades of work, scientists say.

“It would be a mega-breakthrough. Many people think it’s dreaming a little bit because it’s so difficult,” said Bruce Campbell, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

But early tests to improve photosynthesis in tobacco have shown a 40 per cent boost in production — and the technique is now being tested with crops from cassava to maize, said Kathy Kahn, a crop research expert with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Nick Austin, who directs agricultural development for the foundation, said such changes “are going to benefit the poor and rich worlds together” — and could play a key role in keeping food prices affordable.

“These technologies… are going to be globally relevant,” he predicted.

Other efforts to help farmers — including the poorest — adapt to climate pressures have already taken root, Khan said.

Flood-tolerant rice that can withstand being submerged under water, for instance, is now being used by six million farmers in Asia to cope with more extreme weather, she said.

But Christensen, of the University of Copenhagen, thinks even more high-tech innovations — from weeding robots to drones — are likely to reach poorer farmers too.

With Africa expected to see rapid population growth and movement to cities in coming decades, its farmers will need to become more efficient at producing larger amounts of food, he said.

“If you want to increase efficiency, you need to use machinery to do some of the hard work,” he added.

He believes prices for drones and robots will fall rapidly in years to come, just as they once did for mobile phones.

“Maybe you will share this machinery with your neighbour,” Christensen said. “A village of smallholder farmers could think of buying one for all their fields.”

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Dramatically reducing the use of coal, planting huge swathes of land with carbon-absorbing forest or powering most transport with electricity are no longer sufficient to bring about the swift transition needed, they said, with warming expected to pass the 1.5 mark in as little as 12 years.

“We can make choices about how much of each option to choose, but the idea you can leave anything out is impossible,” said Jim Skea, who jointly led a major scientific report analyzing the feasibility of holding global average temperature rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, the most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

To have a chance of meeting the 1.5 C goal, climate-changing emissions would have to plunge 45 per cent by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, the report said.

As that would be an “unprecedented” rate of decline, it is more likely the world will overshoot the target, then try to return to it by sucking carbon from the air, scientists said.

Such “carbon removal” might happen by developing better technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — now an extremely expensive process — or by planting many more forests that could be harvested and burned for energy, with emissions pumped into underground storage.

“We have not identified any pathways that get to 1.5 C without some kind of carbon dioxide removal,” Skea said.

But turning over much more land for energy production “could have implications for food security, ecosystems and biodiversity”, the British scientist warned, as competition for land grows.

Swiftly reducing emissions — even with carbon removal — will also require unprecedented levels of international co-operation, a particular challenge as some national governments, like that in the United States, look increasingly inward.

Making the needed emissions changes “is within the scope of what humans can achieve,”said Hans-Otto Portner, a German climate scientist and IPCC report co-chair.

But success “depends on political leadership,” he added.

Henri Waisman, a senior researcher at Paris-based think tank IDDRI and one of 91 report authors, said the report’s aim was to set out the types of transformation required as clearly as possible to inform discussions at United Nations climate talks and beyond.

Delaying action on climate change “is something that is explicitly contradicted in the report,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

If governments fail to ramp up their ambition to reduce heat-trapping emissions over the next two years, they will have consciously abandoned the 1.5 degree goal, he added.

Action in cities, which consume more than two-thirds of energy globally and account for about three-quarters of carbon emissions, are pivotal to meeting the target, said report author William Solecki, a professor at Hunter College-City University of New York.

That is particularly true because most population growth in coming years “is going to be in urban areas, a lot of it particularly in small and medium-sized cities… in the global south,” he said.

Those cities will need more support to develop cleanly, prevent disasters and adapt to climate shifts, he added.

The scientists said the report was intended to guide more than just governments, however, and that action by everyone, including individuals and businesses, would be required to hold the line on climate change.

“There’s a lot we can do individually or within our communities,” said Debora Ley, a report author who works on adaptation and renewable energy in Latin America.

Personal changes might include everything from eating less meat to using energy-efficient appliances and reducing air travel, said Patricia Pinho, a Brazilian climate scientist and report author.

Individuals and civic groups have a big role to play in pushing governments to tackle climate threats, and are stepping up pressure as recognition of the danger grows, she said.

“We have to live our lives in a way that makes a difference. Our life on this planet, our kids are at risk,” she said.

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Why it matters: Without stepped-up action, efforts to adapt to the coming changes are likely to run up against limits that could end in growing disaster losses, poverty and migration, scientists warn.

“The world we know today is not the world we will see in 50 years” if global warming exceeds 1.5 C, warned Debora Ley, one of 91 authors of a report looking at the feasibility of holding temperature rise to the most ambitious target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

From accelerating species extinctions to escalating forest fires, “it will be considerably worse,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (see ‘What is the IPCC?’ below), requested by governments, was issued ahead of a UN conference in December in Poland that will consider how to increase country ambitions to cut emissions and manage climate risks better.

Current government commitments to curb climate change under the Paris pact, even if fully met, would still leave the world on track for about three degrees of warming, scientists said.

The IPCC report noted that while risks are highest for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, no part of the world will be immune from rising threats if temperatures push past 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.

“We have this idea that those who suffer the most impacts (from global warming) are marginalized or live in remote areas,” said Patricia Pinho, a Brazilian sustainability expert and one of the report authors.

But Sao Paulo, a Brazilian city of 12 million, nearly ran out of water in 2015 as a result of extreme drought, she said — and Cape Town in South Africa faced a similar threat this year.

“We are not talking about something that is going to happen. It is happening,” she said, even with warming of about 1 C so far.

Limiting global warming to 1.5 C compared to two degrees, the higher target in the Paris pact, could reduce the proportion of the world’s population exposed to increasing water stress by up to half, the report noted.

And the lower target would mean up to 10 million fewer people would face risks from sea level rise, such as flooding or displacement, the report said.

“It’s clear half a degree matters,” Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a French scientist and IPCC report co-chair, told journalists.

What is the IPCC?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the world’s leading body for assessing climate change. It was established in 1998 by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization to provide policymakers with scientific assessments on climate change. It has 195 member states.

The IPCC’s previous report, called the Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report (AR5), was completed at the end of 2014 and called for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut to zero by 2100 to limit the risk of irreversible damage from climate change.

What is this latest report all about?

The Oct. 8 “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees,” prepared at the request of governments that signed the 2015 Paris Agreement, outlines the impact of global warming of 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels and steps needed to contain warming at that level.

The summary for policymakers presents the main findings of the report, based on an assessment of all available scientific, technical and socio-economic research. It compares the impact of global warming of 1.5 C and 2 C.

The report was prepared by 91 authors and review editors from 40 countries. More than 6,000 scientific references are cited and there were 133 contributing authors. It also contains more than 42,000 expert and government review comments.

IPCC sessions are conducted behind closed doors. Governments can try and make changes to the text but changes must be agreed by consensus. In addition, IPCC scientists ensure any amendments are consistent with the scientific evidence.

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