Climate change is an established fact and its impacts on water, agriculture, health, biodiversity, forest and socio-economic sectors are quite visible around the globe. Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to climate change because it has generally a warm climate, lies in a geographical region where the temperature increases are expected to be higher than the global average. As agriculture is the lifeline of our economy, the influence of changing temperatures is expected to be most lethal in this sector. After industrial revolution, emission of Green House Gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere increased drastically from industry and vehicular fossil fuel burning. Such gases have large warming potential and long life time to sustain warming process for decades to centuries. During 20th century, the increase in the global temperature was recorded as 0.76°C but in the first decade of this century 0.6°C rise has been noticed. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that the global mean temperature may increase between 1.4 to 5.8oC before the present century ends. This unprecedented increase is expected to have severe impacts on the global hydrological system, ecosystems, sea level, crop production and related processes. The impact would be particularly severe in tropical areas, which largely consists of developing countries, including Pakistan. The dry land areas, including arid and semi-arid regions are most vulnerable to these changes, as these regions are already facing significant water shortages and high temperature. The biophysical relationships could also be altered due to seasonal changes in cultivating crops which will consequently lead to changing irrigation requirements, altering soil characteristics and increasing the risk of pests and diseases, thereby negatively affecting agriculture productivity. On one hand, the seasonal march of monsoon (onset, number of rainy days, offset etc.) is disturbed due to changing climate, on the other hand its inter-annual variability (repeated drought/flood events) has posed a serious challenge for the sustainable crop production.
To assess impact of climate change on crop production and devise strategies to overcome in Punjab, worthy Director General Agri. (Research) on the direction of Government of the Punjab established "Climate Change Unit" at Ayub Agricultural Research Institute (AARI), Faisalabad on 26-08-2015 and later on upgraded it to "Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC)" on 05-09-2016. His Excellence Secretary Agriculture, Capt. (Rtd.) Muhammad Mahmood and worthy Director General Agri. (Research) Dr. Abid Mahmood in the presence of a galaxy of eminent research scientists, inaugurated the "Climate Change Research Centre" at Plant Physiology Section, Ayub Agricultural Research Institute, Faisalabad on September 07, 2016.