Adaptation of maize production to climate change in North China Plain: Quantify the relative contributions of adaptation options

Adaptation is a key factor that will shape the future severity of climate change impacts on food production. We need to evaluate the relative potential of adaptation strategies, and to develop effective adaptation strategies to cope with climate risk. Here, we apply a super-ensemble-based probabilistic projection system (SuperEPPS) to project maize productivity and evapotranspiration (ET) over growing period during 2050s in the North China Plain, and to examine the relative contributions of adaptation options. Based on a large number of simulation outputs from the super-ensemble-based projection, our results show that without adaptation maize yield could decrease averagely by 13.2–19.1%, and ET during growing period could decrease by 15.6–21.8% during 2050s, relative to 1961–1990. In comparison with the experiment without adaptation, using high-temperature sensitive varieties, maize yield could averagely increase by 1.0–6.0%, 9.9–15.2%, and 4.1–5.6%, by adopting adaptation options of early planting, fixing variety growing duration, and late planting, respectively. ET could averagely increase by 1.9–4.4%, 1.9–3.7%, and −2.9% to −0.7%, respectively. In contrast, using high-temperature tolerant varieties, maize yield could averagely increase by −2.4% to −1.4%, 34.7–45.6%, and 5.7–6.1%, respectively. ET could averagely increase by 0.7–0.9%, 9.4–11.6%, and −0.4% to 0.2%, respectively. The spatial patterns show that the relative contributions of adaptation options can be geographically quite different, depending on the climate and variety properties. The biggest benefits will result from the development of new crop varieties that are high-temperature tolerant and have high thermal requirements.