Climate Change Impacts on Winter Wheat Yield in Northern China

Xiu Geng,Zhixin Hao,Fang Wang,Wei Ren

doi:10.1155/2019/2767018

Abstract

Exploring the impacts of climate change on agriculture is one of important topics with respect to climate change. We quantitatively examined the impacts of climate change on winter wheat yield in Northern China using the Cobb–Douglas production function. Utilizing time-series data of agricultural production and meteorological observations from 1981 to 2016, the impacts of climatic factors on wheat production were assessed. It was found that the contribution of climatic factors to winter wheat yield per unit area (WYPA) was 0.762–1.921% in absolute terms. Growing season average temperature (GSAT) had a negative impact on WYPA for the period of 1981–2016. A 1% increase in GSAT could lead to a loss of 0.109% of WYPA when the other factors were constant. While growing season precipitation (GSP) had a positive impact on WYPA, as a 1% increase in GSP could result in 0.186% increase in WYPA, other factors kept constant. Then, the impacts on WYPA for the period 2021–2050 under two different emissions scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 were forecasted. For the whole study area, GSAT is projected to increase 1.37°C under RCP4.5 and 1.54°C under RCP8.5 for the period 2021–2050, which will lower the average WYPA by 1.75% and 1.97%, respectively. GSP is tended to increase by 17.31% under RCP4.5 and 22.22% under RCP8.5 and will give a rise of 3.22% and 4.13% in WYPA. The comprehensive effect of GSAT and GSP will increase WYPA by 1.47% under RCP4.5 and 2.16% under RCP8.5.

Highlights

In recent years, the frequency of various meteorological disasters such as drought, flood, and frost has increased due to climate change, which seriously impaired many climatesensitive sectors [1]
Cobb–Douglas production function is a multifactor analysis model, which can effectively describe the relationship between production factors and output. e production factors used in this study included both agricultural inputs and climatic factors, and we introduced climatic factors Growing season average temperature (GSAT) and growing season precipitation (GSP) into the Cobb–Douglas production function to quantitatively investigate the impacts of climate change on wheat yield for the five provinces in Northern China
NRMSE and IA were 8.14% and 0.98, respectively, showing a high extrapolating performance of the model. e coefficients on all of the agricultural inputs were positive and significant as expected for wheat yield per unit area (WYPA), except the labor with a negative coefficient. is indicated that WYPA increased with more fertilizer use, machinery, and irrigation but decreased with more labor. e reason why labor had a negative impact on YWPA was explicable that, since 1980, the agricultural mechanization improved rapidly, which resulted in a large surplus of agricultural labor

Summary

Introduction

The frequency of various meteorological disasters such as drought, flood, and frost has increased due to climate change, which seriously impaired many climatesensitive sectors [1]. Previous studies have shown that the warming caused by greenhouse gases is more pronounced at higher latitudes [7], which could lengthen growing seasons and reduce the risk of freezing injury due to low temperature and have positive effects on crops here [8, 9]. Higher temperature will adversely affect growing conditions in lower latitudes, especially in areas where temperatures are close to or at the optimal level for crop growth to begin with [10, 11]. Impacts on agriculture are likely to be especially severe in developing countries because of their low agricultural investment, technological levels, and capability to cope with climate change [12, 13]. It is urgent for us to understand the possible impacts of climate change on China’s agriculture production, so that the planting strategies can be provided timely to avoid or mitigate the negative impacts from climate change

Methods

Results

Conclusion