Sources of uncertainty for wheat yield projections under future climate are site-specific

Title
Sources of uncertainty for wheat yield projections under future climate are site-specific
Publication Date
2020
Author(s)
Wang, Bin
Feng, Puyu
Liu, De Li
O'Leary, Garry J
Macadam, Ian
Waters, Cathy
Asseng, Senthold
Cowie, Annette
Jiang, Tengcong
Xiao, Dengpan
Ruan, Hongyan
He, Jianqiang
Yu, Qiang
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1038/s43016-020-00181-w
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/58273
Abstract

Understanding sources of uncertainty in climate–crop modelling is critical for informing adaptation strategies for cropping systems. An understanding of the major sources of uncertainty in yield change is needed to develop strategies to reduce the total uncertainty. Here, we simulated rain-fed wheat cropping at four representative locations in China and Australia using eight crop models, 32 global climate models (GCMs) and two climate downscaling methods, to investigate sources of uncertainty in yield response to climate change. We partitioned the total uncertainty into sources caused by GCMs, crop models, climate scenarios and the interactions between these three. Generally, the contributions to uncertainty were broadly similar in the two downscaling methods. The dominant source of uncertainty is GCMs in Australia, whereas in China it is crop models. This difference is largely due to uncertainty in GCM-projected future rainfall change across locations. Our findings highlight the site-specific sources of uncertainty, which should be one step towards understanding uncertainties for more robust climate–crop modelling.

Link
Citation
Nature Food, 1(11), p. 720-728
ISSN
2662-1355
Start page
720
End page
728

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