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Liu, B., Martre, P., Ewert, F., Porter, J. R., Challinor, A. J., Mueller, C., et al. (2019). Global wheat production with 1.5 and 2.0 degrees C above pre-industrial warming. Glob. Chang. Biol., 25(4), 1428–1444.
Abstract: Efforts to limit global warming to below 2 degrees C in relation to the pre-industrial level are under way, in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement. However, most impact research on agriculture to date has focused on impacts of warming >2 degrees C on mean crop yields, and many previous studies did not focus sufficiently on extreme events and yield interannual variability. Here, with the latest climate scenarios from the Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) project, we evaluated the impacts of the 2015 Paris Agreement range of global warming (1.5 and 2.0 degrees C warming above the pre-industrial period) on global wheat production and local yield variability. A multi-crop and multi-climate model ensemble over a global network of sites developed by the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) for Wheat was used to represent major rainfed and irrigated wheat cropping systems. Results show that projected global wheat production will change by -2.3% to 7.0% under the 1.5 degrees C scenario and -2.4% to 10.5% under the 2.0 degrees C scenario, compared to a baseline of 1980-2010, when considering changes in local temperature, rainfall, and global atmospheric CO2 concentration, but no changes in management or wheat cultivars. The projected impact on wheat production varies spatially; a larger increase is projected for temperate high rainfall regions than for moderate hot low rainfall and irrigated regions. Grain yields in warmer regions are more likely to be reduced than in cooler regions. Despite mostly positive impacts on global average grain yields, the frequency of extremely low yields (bottom 5 percentile of baseline distribution) and yield inter-annual variability will increase under both warming scenarios for some of the hot growing locations, including locations from the second largest global wheat producer-India, which supplies more than 14% of global wheat. The projected global impact of warming <2 degrees C on wheat production is therefore not evenly distributed and will affect regional food security across the globe as well as food prices and trade.
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Martre, P., Wallach, D., Asseng, S., Ewert, F., Jones, J. W., Rötter, R. P., et al. (2015). Multimodel ensembles of wheat growth: many models are better than one. Glob. Chang. Biol., 21(2), 911–925.
Abstract: Crop models of crop growth are increasingly used to quantify the impact of global changes due to climate or crop management. Therefore, accuracy of simulation results is a major concern. Studies with ensembles of crop models can give valuable information about model accuracy and uncertainty, but such studies are difficult to organize and have only recently begun. We report on the largest ensemble study to date, of 27 wheat models tested in four contrasting locations for their accuracy in simulating multiple crop growth and yield variables. The relative error averaged over models was 24-38% for the different end-of-season variables including grain yield (GY) and grain protein concentration (GPC). There was little relation between error of a model for GY or GPC and error for in-season variables. Thus, most models did not arrive at accurate simulations of GY and GPC by accurately simulating preceding growth dynamics. Ensemble simulations, taking either the mean (e-mean) or median (e-median) of simulated values, gave better estimates than any individual model when all variables were considered. Compared to individual models, e-median ranked first in simulating measured GY and third in GPC. The error of e-mean and e-median declined with an increasing number of ensemble members, with little decrease beyond 10 models. We conclude that multimodel ensembles can be used to create new estimators with improved accuracy and consistency in simulating growth dynamics. We argue that these results are applicable to other crop species, and hypothesize that they apply more generally to ecological system models.
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Cammarano, D., Rötter, R. P., Asseng, S., Ewert, F., Wallach, D., Martre, P., et al. (2016). Uncertainty of wheat water use: Simulated patterns and sensitivity to temperature and CO2. Field Crops Research, 198, 80–92.
Abstract: Projected global warming and population growth will reduce future water availability for agriculture. Thus, it is essential to increase the efficiency in using water to ensure crop productivity. Quantifying crop water use (WU; i.e. actual evapotranspiration) is a critical step towards this goal. Here, sixteen wheat simulation models were used to quantify sources of model uncertainty and to estimate the relative changes and variability between models for simulated WU, water use efficiency (WUE, WU per unit of grain dry mass produced), transpiration efficiency (Teff, transpiration per kg of unit of grain yield dry mass produced), grain yield, crop transpiration and soil evaporation at increased temperatures and elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations ([CO2]). The greatest uncertainty in simulating water use, potential evapotranspiration, crop transpiration and soil evaporation was due to differences in how crop transpiration was modelled and accounted for 50% of the total variability among models. The simulation results for the sensitivity to temperature indicated that crop WU will decline with increasing temperature due to reduced growing seasons. The uncertainties in simulated crop WU, and in particularly due to uncertainties in simulating crop transpiration, were greater under conditions of increased temperatures and with high temperatures in combination with elevated atmospheric [CO2] concentrations. Hence the simulation of crop WU, and in particularly crop transpiration under higher temperature, needs to be improved and evaluated with field measurements before models can be used to simulate climate change impacts on future crop water demand.
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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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Nendel, C., Thorburn, P., Melzer, D., Cerri, C. E. P., Claessens, L., Aggarwal, P. K., et al. (2016). Soil nitrogen mineralisation simulated by crop models across different environments and the consequences for model improvement.. Berlin (Germany).
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