Future extreme temperature and its impact on rice yield in China

Abstract

Rice in China is increasingly suffered from extreme temperature stress (ETS) with ongoing climate change. It is projected that ETS would increase notably across the world in the future. However, the spatio-temporal change of ETS in main rice planting areas in China is still unclear; and the future yield loss caused by ETS (YL ETS ) has seldom been investigated quantitatively. In this study, we first investigated the spatio-temporal change of ETS across China under 20 climate change scenarios consisting of five global climate models and four Representative Carbon Pathways (2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5). Then, using a process-based crop model (MCWLA-Rice), its 30 sets of model parameters and the 20 climate change scenarios, we conducted a super-ensemble assessment to investigate the YL ETS over 2020-2049, relative to the baseline period , across China. The results showed that, an increased heat ETS and a decreased cold ETS would be expected for most areas. As a result, a large spatial variability of yield loss would be expected in the future, including severely cold stress for region I (northeastern China, single rice) and region IV (southern China, early rice), but severely heat stress for region III (the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, single rice) and region IV (southern China, late rice). Comparing yield loss from both ETS, a decreased change in yield loss would be mainly expected in region I (northeastern China, single rice), while an increased change for region III (the middle and lower reaches of Yangtze River, single rice) and IV (southern China, late rice), with less change for region II (southwestern China, single rice) and IV (southern China, early rice). Finally, some adaptation measures were proposed for the ETS-sensitive areas. Our findings are useful to develop effective policies to cope with climate risk and relieve ETS disasters.

Prediction of Winter Wheat Yield Based on Multi-Source Data and Machine Learning in China

“…Climate variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation) are important drivers for crop production [43][44][45]. Extreme temperatures and droughts show adverse impacts on crops in the context of global climate change [35,46,47].…”

Impacts of climate change and climate extremes on major crops productivity in China at a global warming of 1.5 and 2.0 °C

“…Meanwhile, with climate warming, the frequency and intensity of climate extreme events, for example heat stress, are projected to increase and substantially threaten crop growth and food security, especially for some susceptible areas (Wahid et al, 2007;Asseng et al, 2011;Gourdji et al, 2013). Beside the negative impacts, the warmer environment could also improve crop production in some areas that suffer from a heat deficit (Tao et al, 2008a(Tao et al, , 2012(Tao et al, , 2014Zhang et al, 2014). In addition, elevated CO 2 concentration could inhibit stomatal conductance and reduce transpiration rates (Brown and Rosenberg, 1997;Burkart et al, 2011;Deryng et al, 2016), enhance photosynthesis, and consequently have fertilization effects on crop productivity (Ainsworth et al, 2008;Leakey, 2009;Vanuytrecht et al, 2012;Pugh et al, 2016).…”

Impacts of climate change and climate extremes on major crops productivity in China at a global warming of 1.5 °C & 2.0 °C

“…CC BY 4.0 License. extreme on crop growth and yields at broad areas of the world (Asseng et al, 2013;Bassu et al, 2014;Asseng et al, 2015;Li et al, 2015;Tao et al, 2015;Shuai et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016;Chen et al, 2017a;Chen et al, 2017b;Zhang et al, 2017). In general, the MCWLA models could fairly well capture the effects of climate change, climate extreme and elevated CO 2 on crop growth and yields.…”

“…For rice, the contribution of increased temperature and solar radiation would be more distinct for rice production in southwest and northeast China where growth duration would decrease by less than 2%. The large increase of rice yield in these areas indicated a more appropriate environment, particularly a more suitable thermal scenario, for photosynthesis (Tao et al, 2008b;Zhang et al, 2017).…”