Scenario development for estimating potential climate change impacts on crop production in the North China Plain

Abstract

ABSTRACT:It is important to investigate potential changes in temperature, precipitation and solar radiation for assessing the impacts of future climate change on agricultural production for specific regions. In this study, climate scenarios of precipitation, temperature and solar radiation for the North China Plain (NCP) were constructed in terms of stochastic daily weather sequences. A nonhomogeneous hidden Markov model (NHMM) was used to downscale daily precipitation projections at 32 stations during winter wheat and summer maize growing seasons for a baseline and a 21st century (2080-2099) A1B scenario, using selected general circulation models (GCMs). A climatological seasonal cycle of regional-averaged daily reanalysis precipitation was used as input to the down-scaling for the baseline simulation; this input was then scaled by the precipitation changes from GCM projections to generate down-scaled stochastic simulations of precipitation in the 21st century. Temperature was generated using a weakly stationary generating process, conditional on precipitation occurrence, with 21st century additive changes taken from the GCMs at the regional scale. Three hypotheses about changes in solar radiation (−20%, 0% and 20%) were made considering the large uncertainty in its future change. The down-scaled simulations exhibit station increases in the mean daily rainfall of 13.9-69.7% in the scenarios driven by the GCM with the projected largest and multi-model mean precipitation increase for the wheat season, with changes of 0.4-29.9% for the maize season. In the scenario driven by the GCM with the largest projected precipitation decrease, the simulated rainfall decreases at all stations, with changes ranging from −24.6 to −0.1% for the wheat and maize seasons, respectively. Temperature increases by about 3.7• C for the wheat season and 3.6• C for the maize season.

Wheat yield in Spain and associated solar radiation patterns

“…In fact, Michel and Makowski () found wheat yields to be stagnating and declining in some European countries but increasing in others. Nevertheless, a number of studies have found that climate change has a negative effect on potential wheat yield, considering projections of the variables that influence wheat production, for example, precipitation or temperature (Bell and Fischer, ; Pathak et al ., ; Luo et al ., ; Li et al ., ; Liu et al ., , ; Lobell et al ., ; Chen et al ., ). According to our results, the increase of solar radiation over Spain could force a wheat‐yield decrease.…”

Influence of the North Atlantic sea surface temperature on decadal variability of the July precipitation in north China

“…North China (34°–44°N, 110°–120°E) is a highly populated area and one of major agricultural, industrial and economic centres of China (Zhang et al ., 2015). Water resources are very important for agricultural security and economic development in north China, while water resources in north China are relatively scarce (Ge and Huang, 2001; Huang et al ., 2003; Chen et al ., 2013; Zhang et al ., 2014). Precipitation in north China is an important source of water resources.…”

Influence of the Northwest Pacific tripole mode on the mid-summer precipitation in North China and the regulation by the North Atlantic

“…North China (35 • -44 • N, 110 • -120 • E) is a densely populated area and one of the major political, economic and agricultural centers of China (Gao et al 2022). Water resources in North China are relatively scarce, precipitation is an important source and the rainy season is very concentrated compared to other regions in China (Chen et al 2013, 2020, Ge and Huang 2001, Pei et al 2015, Chen and Sun 2019, Li and Lei 2022. Precipitation in North China is mainly concentrated in summer, so many scholars have conducted numerous studies on summer precipitation in North China (i.e.…”