Crop–climate models need more realistic representations of irrigation under warming

Nature Water, Published online: 05 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s44221-026-00642-9 Crop models increasingly project that irrigation can offset agricultural losses from climate change, informing major adaptation investments worldwide. Yet these models may systematically overestimate irrigation’s protective capacity because the representation of how irrigation alters crop thermal environments remains incomplete in most large-scale assessments and assumes static efficiency under changing atmospheric condi