The impacts of climate change on wheat yield in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China using DSSAT-CERES-Wheat model under different climate scenarios

Climate change has been documented as a major threat to current agricultural strategies. Progress in understanding the impact of climate change on crop yield is essential for agricultural climate adaptation, especially for the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain (3H Plain) of China which is an area known to be vulnerable to global warming. In this study, the impacts of climate change on winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) yield between the baseline period (1981-2010) and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP8.5 and RCP4.5) were simulated for the short-term (2010-2039), the medium-term (2040-2069) and the long-term (2070-2099) in the 3H Plain, by considering the relative contributions of changes in temperature, solar radiation and precipitation using the DSSAT-CERES-Wheat model. Results indicated that the maximum and minimum temperatures (TMAX and TMIN), solar radiation (SRAD), and precipitation (PREP) during the winter wheat season increased under these two RCPs. Yield analysis found that wheat yield increased with the increase in SRAD, PREP and CO 2 concentration, but decreased with an increase in temperature. Increasing precipitation contributes the most to the total impact, increasing wheat yield by 9.53, 6.62 and 23.73% for the three terms of future climate under RCP4.5 scenario, and 11.74, 16.38 and 27.78% for the three terms of future climate under RCP8.5 scenario. However, as increases in temperature bring higher evapotranspiration, which further aggravated water deficits, the supposed negative effect of increasing thermal resources decreased wheat yield by 1.92, 4.08 and 5.24% for the three terms of future climate under RCP4.5 scenario, and 3.64, 5.87 and 5.81% for the three terms of future climate under RCP8.5 scenario with clearly larger decreases in RCP8.5. Counterintuitively, the impacts in southern sub-regions were positive, but they were all negative in the remaining sub-regions. Our analysis demonstrated that in the 3H Plain, which is a part of the mid-high latitude region, the effects of increasing thermal resources were counteracted by the aggravated water deficits caused by the increase in temperature.