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Waha, K., Müller, C., & Rolinski, S. (2013). Separate and combined effects of temperature and precipitation change on maize yields in sub-Saharan Africa for mid- to late-21st century. Global and Planetary Change, 106, 1–12.
Abstract: Maize (Zea mays L) is one of the most important food crops and very common in all parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In 2010 53 million tons of maize were produced in sub-Saharan Africa on about one third of the total harvested cropland area (similar to 33 million ha). Our aim is to identify the limiting agroclimatic variable for maize growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa by analyzing the separated and combined effects of temperature and precipitation. Under changing climate, both climate variables are projected to change severely, and their impacts on crop yields are frequently assessed using process-based crop models. However it is often unclear which agroclimatic variable will have the strongest influence on crop growth and development under climate change and previous studies disagree over this question. We create synthetic climate data in order to study the effect of large changes in the length of the wet season and the amount of precipitation during the wet season both separately and in combination with changes in temperature. The dynamic global vegetation model for managed land LPJmL is used to simulate maize yields under current and future climatic conditions for the two 10-year periods 2056-2065 and 2081-2090 for three climate scenarios for the A1b emission scenario but without considering the beneficial CO2 fertilization effect. The importance of temperature and precipitation effects on maize yields varies spatially and we identify four groups of crop yield changes: regions with strong negative effects resulting from climate change (<-33% yield change), regions with moderate (-33% to -10% yield change) or slight negative effects (-10% to +6% yield change), and regions with positive effects arising from climate change mainly in currently temperature-limited high altitudes (>+6% yield change). In the first three groups temperature increases lead to maize yield reductions of 3 to 20%, with the exception of mountainous and thus cooler regions in South and East Africa. A reduction of the wet season precipitation causes decreases in maize yield of at least 30% and prevails over the effect of increased temperatures in southern parts of Mozambique and Zambia, the Sahel and parts of eastern Africa in the two projection periods. This knowledge about the limiting abiotic stress factor in each region will help to prioritize future research needs in modeling of agricultural systems as well as in drought and heat stress breeding programs and to identify adaption options in agricultural development projects. On the other hand the study enhances the understanding of temperature and water stress effects on crop yields in a global vegetation model in order to identify future research and model development needs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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Houska, T., Kraft, P., Liebermann, R., Klatt, S., Kraus, D., Haas, E., et al. (2017). Rejecting hydro-biogeochemical model structures by multi-criteria evaluation. Env. Model. Softw., 93, 1–12.
Abstract: Highlights • New method to investigate biogeochemical model structure performance. • Process based hydrological modelling can improve biogeochemical model predictions. • Modelling efficiency dramatically drops with multiple objectives. Abstract This work presents a novel way for assessing and comparing different hydro-biogeochemical model structures and their performances. We used the LandscapeDNDC modelling framework to set up four models of different complexity, considering two soil-biogeochemical and two hydrological modules. The performance of each model combination was assessed using long-term (8 years) data and applying different thresholds, considering multiple criteria and objective functions. Our results show that each model combination had its strength for particular criteria. However, only 0.01% of all model runs passed the complete rejectionist framework. In contrast, our comparatively applied assessments of single thresholds, as frequently used in other studies, lead to a much higher acceptance rate of 40–70%. Therefore, our study indicates that models can be right for the wrong reasons, i.e., matching GHG emissions while at the same time failing to simulate other criteria such as soil moisture or plant biomass dynamics.
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Fronzek, S., Pirttioja, N., Carter, T. R., Bindi, M., Hoffmann, H., Palosuo, T., et al. (2017). Classifying multi-model wheat yield impact response surfaces showing sensitivity to temperature and precipitation change (Vol. 10).
Abstract: Crop growth simulation models can differ greatly in their treatment of key processes and hence in their response to environmental conditions. Here, we used an ensemble of 26 process-based wheat models applied at sites across a European transect to compare their sensitivity to changes in temperature (−2 to +9°C) and precipitation (−50 to +50%). Model results were analysed by plotting them as impact response surfaces (IRSs), classifying the IRS patterns of individual model simulations, describing these classes and analysing factors that may explain the major differences in model responses. The model ensemble was used to simulate yields of winter and spring wheat at sites in Finland, Germany and Spain. Results were plotted as IRSs that show changes in yields relative to the baseline with respect to temperature and precipitation. IRSs of 30-year means and selected extreme years were classified using two approaches describing their pattern. The expert diagnostic approach (EDA) combines two aspects of IRS patterns: location of the maximum yield (nine classes, Figure 1) and strength of the yield response with respect to climate (four classes), resulting in a total of 36 combined classes defined using criteria pre-specified by experts. The statistical diagnostic approach (SDA) groups IRSs by comparing their pattern and magnitude, without attempting to interpret these features. It applies a hierarchical clustering method, grouping response patterns using a distance metric that combines the spatial correlation and Euclidian distance between IRS pairs. The two approaches were used to investigate whether different patterns of yield response could be related to different properties of the crop models, specifically their genealogy, calibration and process description. Although no single model property across a large model ensemble was found to explain the integrated yield response to temperature and precipitation perturbations, the application of the EDA and SDA approaches revealed their capability to distinguish: (i) stronger yield responses to precipitation for winter wheat than spring wheat; (ii) differing strengths of response to climate changes for years with anomalous weather conditions compared to period-average conditions; (iii) the influence of site conditions on yield patterns; (iv) similarities in IRS patterns among models with related genealogy; (v) similarities in IRS patterns for models with simpler process descriptions of root growth and water uptake compared to those with more complex descriptions; and (vi) a closer correspondence of IRS patterns in models using partitioning schemes to represent yield formation than in those using a harvest index. Such results can inform future crop modelling studies that seek to exploit the diversity of multi-model ensembles, by distinguishing ensemble members that span a wide range of responses as well as those that display implausible behaviour or strong mutual similarities. The full manuscript of this study is currently under revision (Fronzek et al. 2017).
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Maiorano, A., Martre, P., Asseng, S., Ewert, F., Müller, C., Rötter, R. P., et al. (2016). Crop model improvement reduces the uncertainty of the response to temperature of multi-model ensembles. Field Crops Research, 202, 5–20.
Abstract: To improve climate change impact estimates and to quantify their uncertainty, multi-model ensembles (MMEs) have been suggested. Model improvements can improve the accuracy of simulations and reduce the uncertainty of climate change impact assessments. Furthermore, they can reduce the number of models needed in a MME. Herein, 15 wheat growth models of a larger MME were improved through re-parameterization and/or incorporating or modifying heat stress effects on phenology, leaf growth and senescence, biomass growth, and grain number and size using detailed field experimental data from the USDA Hot Serial Cereal experiment (calibration data set). Simulation results from before and after model improvement were then evaluated with independent field experiments from a CIMMYT world-wide field trial network (evaluation data set). Model improvements decreased the variation (10th to 90th model ensemble percentile range) of grain yields simulated by the MME on average by 39% in the calibration data set and by 26% in the independent evaluation data set for crops grown in mean seasonal temperatures >24 °C. MME mean squared error in simulating grain yield decreased by 37%. A reduction in MME uncertainty range by 27% increased MME prediction skills by 47%. Results suggest that the mean level of variation observed in field experiments and used as a benchmark can be reached with half the number of models in the MME. Improving crop models is therefore important to increase the certainty of model-based impact assessments and allow more practical, i.e. smaller MMEs to be used effectively.
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Müller, C., & Robertson, R. D. (2014). Projecting future crop productivity for global economic modeling. Agric. Econ., 45(1), 37–50.
Abstract: Assessments of climate change impacts on agricultural markets and land-use patterns rely on quantification of climate change impacts on the spatial patterns of land productivity. We supply a set of climate impact scenarios on agricultural land productivity derived from two climate models and two biophysical crop growth models to account for some of the uncertainty inherent in climate and impact models. Aggregation in space and time leads to information losses that can determine climate change impacts on agricultural markets and land-use patterns because often aggregation is across steep gradients from low to high impacts or from increases to decreases. The four climate change impact scenarios supplied here were designed to represent the most significant impacts (high emission scenario only, assumed ineffectiveness of carbon dioxide fertilization on agricultural yields, no adjustments in management) but are consistent with the assumption that changes in agricultural practices are covered in the economic models. Globally, production of individual crops decrease by 10-38% under these climate change scenarios, with large uncertainties in spatial patterns that are determined by both the uncertainty in climate projections and the choice of impact model. This uncertainty in climate impact on crop productivity needs to be considered by economic assessments of climate change.
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