Climate Warming: Does Northwest China Face a Stark Food Security Challenge?

Abstract

Abstract. China's economy may be vulnerable to climate change, and Northwest China is an area sensitive to climate change. This review paper summarizes the impacts of climate warming on crop production in typical arid and semi-arid areas of Northwest China. Over the last 50 years, the climate has undergone a series of changes, including higher temperatures, increased drought and warmer winters. The future climate will become warmer and drought will become more severe. This will result in accelerated crop growth, more damage by crop pests, degraded soil, a decline in rain resource utilization, serious effects on the crop growing environment, weakening of agricultural ecological system stability, increased fluctuation in grain yield, difficulty in adjusting crop planting structure, threatened food nutrition and security, increased grain production costs, and risk and uncertainty in grain security. Taking scientific measures to actively keep pace with climate change will be a key strategy for reducing grain security risks in Northwest China.