Data from: Impacts of weather anomalies and climate on plant disease

Predicting effects of climate change on plant disease is critical for
protecting ecosystems and food production. Here, we show how disease
pressure responds to short-term weather, historical climate, and weather
anomalies by compiling a global database (4339 plant–disease populations)
of disease prevalence in both agricultural and wild plant systems. We
hypothesized that weather and climate would play a larger role in disease
in wild versus agricultural plant populations, which the results
supported. In wild systems, disease prevalence peaked when temperature was
2.7°C warmer than the historical average for the same time of year. We
also found evidence of a negative interactive effect between weather
anomalies and climate in wild systems, consistent with the idea that
climate maladaptation can be an important driver of disease outbreaks.
Temperature and precipitation had relatively little explanatory power in
agricultural systems, though we observed a significant positive effect of
current temperature. These results indicate that disease pressure in wild
plants is sensitive to nonlinear effects of weather, weather anomalies,
and their interaction with historical climate. In contrast, warmer
temperatures drove risks for agricultural plant disease outbreaks within
the temperature range examined regardless of historical climate,
suggesting vulnerability to ongoing climate change.