Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

DOI 10.1007/s10584-006-9123-5

Climate change and critical thresholds in China’s

food security

Wei Xiong · Erda Lin · Hui Ju · Yinlong Xu

Received: 13 May 2005 / Accepted: 24 March 2006 / Published online: 13 January 2007
C Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007


Abstract Identification of ‘critical thresholds’ of temperature increase is an essential task

for inform policy decisions on establishing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. We use
the A2 (medium-high GHG emission pathway) and B2 (medium-low) climate change sce-
narios produced by the Regional Climate Model PRECIS, the crop model – CERES, and
socio-economic scenarios described by IPCC SRES, to simulate the average yield changes
per hectare of three main grain crops (rice, wheat, and maize) at 50 km × 50 km scale.
The threshold of food production to temperature increases was analyzed based on the rela-
tionship between yield changes and temperature rise, and then food security was discussed
corresponding to each IPCC SRES scenario. The results show that without the CO2 fertil-
ization effect in the analysis, the yield per hectare for the three crops would fall consistently
as temperature rises beyond 2.5 ◦ C; when the CO2 fertilization effect was included in the
simulation, there were no adverse impacts on China’s food production under the projected
range of temperature rise (0.9–3.9 ◦ C). A critical threshold of temperature increase was not
found for food production. When the socio-economic scenarios, agricultural technology de-
velopment and international trade were incorporated in the analysis, China’s internal food
production would meet a critical threshold of basic demand (300 kg/capita) while it would
not under A2 (no CO2 fertilization); whereas basic food demand would be satisfied under
both A2 and B2, and would even meet a higher food demand threshold required to sustain
economic growth (400 kg/capita) under B2, when CO2 fertilization was considered.

1 Introduction

Since the “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” was proposed in
the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, Art. 2), the “thresholds” in
temperature increase, and in greenhouses gas (GHG) concentrations have been the key dis-
cussion point in relation to the objectives of the UNFCCC. The dangerous threshold concept

W. Xiong () · E. Lin · H. Ju · Y. Xu

Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy
of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, P.R. China
e-mail: xiongw@ami.ac.cn
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206 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

implies that there is a critical temperature threshold in natural and managed ecosystems be-
yond which dangerous adverse effects would occur and which, overall could determine a
critical threshold of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions that society should aim to
avoid (Kenny et al. 2000). Scientific assessments of climate impacts and vulnerability are a
fundamental process for the identification and determination of critical thresholds, although
definition of what is ‘dangerous interference’ is often contentious and acknowledged as a pol-
icy issue (Parry et al. 1996). In recent years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) has placed considerable emphasis on identifying critical thresholds as part of its
assessment procedure. Thresholds, related to climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability,
have been assessed based on different sectors and regions (Smith et al. 2001).
Climate change will affect all economic sectors to some degree, but especially the agri-
cultural sector. Agriculture is a crucial sector for the sustainable development, particularly
in developing countries, where agriculture, or food security is still a key issue for many peo-
ple (Mendelsohn et al. 1999). Numerous factors shape and drive the agriculture sector, e.g.
market fluctuations, management practice, changes in technology, and land use, etc. Climate
change has increasingly been recognized as an additional factor which in conjunction with
conventional pressures, or even on its own, will cause significant effects on agricultural pro-
ductivity in coming decades. Consequently, in relation to climate change, the vulnerability
and possible critical thresholds in the agriculture sector have received considerable attention
from researchers and policy makers (Darwin et al. 1995; Rosenzweig et al. 1995; Parry et al.
1999; Fischer et al. 2002; Parry et al. 2004). The general consensus is that for mid-latitude
crop yields climate change will produce generally positive effects with less than a few degrees
centigrade warming and generally negative effects with more than a few degrees warming.
Yields of some crops in tropical locations would generally decrease with even minimal
increases in temperature (McCarthy 2001). However, there remains no consistent methodol-
ogy or approach for the identification of potential critical thresholds from a biophysical or
socio-economic perspective.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a quantitative analysis of critical thresholds in
China’s crop production. We attempt to answer the question, whether climate change will
affect China’s food supply when the world develops following the description of two IPCC
SRES scenarios. We combine results from a regional climate model, a crop model (CERES)
and socio-economic scenarios for two emissions scenarios and three periods in the future
(2020, 2050 and 2080). The aims addressed in our analysis are: (1) identify the magnitude
of warming corresponding to two greenhouse gas emission scenarios; (2) model the yield
change of three main food crops in China (rice, wheat and maize) relative to different tem-
perature increases; (3) identify a critical threshold of temperature increase in relation to food
production estimated from crop yield; and (4) assess whether a critical threshold of food sup-
ply maintained under the two IPCC SRES scenarios with consideration of future population
growth, development in agricultural technology, and international food trade.

2 Methodology

The study is described in three stages, first, the greenhouse gas emission scenarios A2 and B2
were used to drive the PRECIS (Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies) to generate
baseline and future (A2 and B2) climates; second, CERES (Crop Estimation through Resource
and Environment Synthesis) crop models was used to simulate crop yield under the present
and future climate conditions at 50 km × 50 km resolution. The average change in yield
per hectare for three crops (rice, wheat and maize) is presented. Finally, socio-economic
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Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 207

scenarios, downscaled from IPCC SRES scenarios, incorporating international trade and
agricultural technology progress, were used to address the problem of food security in China
based on the projected grain supply per capita.

2.1 IPCC SRES emission scenarios and climate change scenarios

The climate characteristics of the GCM simulation are based on a set of emission scenarios, or
story lines, created by IPCC. A scenario may be viewed as a coherent, internally consistent and
plausible description of a future state of the world (IPCC 1994). In 1998, a new set of baseline
scenarios was developed in an international and interdisciplinary modeling effort involving
six modeling groups, published by IPCC as the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios
(SRES) (Nakicenovic et al. 2000). These baseline scenarios are divided into four scenario
families (A1FI, B1, A2 and B2), based on differences in governance and in orientation towards
social and environmental concerns. The scenarios also define a range of other aspects and
prevailing values (Table 1), and hence allow the impacts of climate change to be imposed
on the evolving “world” that produced the climate change. For more information on the
details of the SRES scenarios used here, see Arnell et al. (2003). After downscaling of socio-
economic projections from SRES using the approach of Gaffin et al. (2004), the so-called ‘B2
family’, describes a prosperous and fair world that as a result of a general orientation towards
sustainable development leads to relatively low emissions of greenhouse gases. This storyline
fits with the plan of social and economic development over the medium to long term in China
and is selected here as a normal climate change scenario (medium-low emissions). The ‘A2
family’, represents the extreme of the range of likely CO2 concentrations (Cholaw 2003;
Cholaw et al. 2003), and is chosen here to show what impacts would be under a pessimistic
development pathway.
Using the emission scenarios as drivers, regional climate scenarios (Table 2) were gen-
erated following the methodology described by UKCIP (UKCIP 2002). This uses a nested
climate model, a coupled ocean-atmosphere global climate model (HadCM3H; ∼300 km
grid interval), is used to drive a high resolution (∼50 km grid interval) atmospheric regional
model (PRECIS – Providing Regional Climates for Impacts Studies (Jones et al. 2004)) for
China. PRECIS takes the output of HadAM3H at its lateral boundaries, thereby inheriting
the large-scale characteristics of HadAM3H, but has finer spatial resolution (typically 50
km) and time resolution (i.e. daily weather data), better spatial detail (i.e. topography), and
better simulation of extreme weather events. The detailed regional climate experiment can
be obtained from Xu (2004).

Table 1 Derived characteristics of the four main scenario families of the IPCC SRES (from Nakicenovic
et al. 2000)

“A1 world” “B1 world”

Increasing globalization/convergence
Rapid global economic growth
Materialist/consumerist
Rapid uniform technological innovation
“A2 world”
Heterogeneous world
Rapid regional economic growth
Materialist/consumerist
Diverse technological innovation
Increasing global co-operation/convergence
Environmental priority
Clean and efficient technologies
“B2 world”
Heterogeneous world/local emphasis
Environmental priority
Clean and efficient technologies

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 Table 2 Climate scenarios, emission scenarios, socio-economic scenarios and CO2 concentration for China (from Hulme and Sheard 1999)
208

A2 B2

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Temperature Precipitation Population GDP (trillion Temperature Precipitation CO2 Population GDP
Periods increase (◦ C) increase (%) CO2 (ppm) (billion) $) increase (◦ C) increase(%) (ppm) (billion) (trillion$)

2020 1.4 3.3 440 1.60 2.47 0.9 3.7 429 1.43 4.54
2050 2.6 7.0 559 2.09 7.31 1.5 7.0 492 1.55 17.13
2080 3.9 12.9 721 2.26 15.92 2.0 10.2 561 1.58 27.46

Table 3 Percent change in total yield of three crops from Baseline yield (1961–1990) in China (Lin et al. 2005)

Irrigated rice(%) Rain-fed wheat(%) Rain-fed maize(%)

With or without
Scenarios CO2 fertilization effect 2020 2050 2080 2020 2050 2080 2020 2050 2080

A2 Without −8.9 −12.4 −16.8 −18.5 −20.4 −21.7 −10.3 −22.8 −36.4
With 3.8 6.2 7.8 15.4 20.0 23.6 9.8 18.4 20.3
B2 Without −1.1 −4.3 −12.4 −10.2 −11.4 −12.9 −11.3 −14.5 −26.9
With −0.4 −1.2 −4.9 4.5 6.6 12.7 1.1 8.5 10.4
Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221
Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 209

2.2 Crop model simulation in China

The crop models used in this study are included in DSSAT3.5 (Tsuji et al. 1994; Hoogenboom
et al. 1999). The CERES models were: CERES-Wheat (Godwin et al. 1989), CERES-Rice
(Singh et al. 1993), and CERES-Maize (Ritchie et al. 1989). The CERES models are a
process-based, management-oriented model simulating the growth and development of cereal
crops. They can simulate the effects of the main environmental factors, such as weather, soil
type, and major soil characteristics, together with the effects of crop management on crop
growth, development, and yield (Ritchie et al. 1998). We decided to use these models as they
have been relatively well tested in a range of environments (e.g., Bachelet et al. 1993). A
full description of the CERES models is given by Ritchie et al. (1998). Briefly, the model
operates on a daily time-step and calculates biomass production, which is then partitioned
between leaves, stems, roots and grain, depending on the phonological stage of the plant.
Submodels calculate the water balance and N transformations in the soil, and crop uptake of
water and N.
Previous studies have validated CERES in China. Matthews et al. (2000) used the CERES-
Rice as a core model to simulate CH4 emissions from East Asia, and concluded that CERES-
Rice was able to reproduce ground biomass, and grain yields of rice under a variety of man-
agement and climate conditions. Rosenzweig et al. (1999) calibrated and validated CERES-
Wheat for eight sites in the major wheat-growing regions of China, and found that the
validated crop model was useful for simulating the range of conditions under which wheat is
grown in China, and provided a mean to estimate production functions when experimental
field data were not available. Wu et al. (1989) used CERES-Maize to simulate maize yield
for 1979–1984 in the North China Plain after calibrating the model based on local data. They
argued that the model tended to overestimate yield in wet years and underestimate yield in
dry years, however when the model was modified to account for the effects of excess water, it
demonstrated reasonable performance in North China across a wide range of conditions. For
this study, a validation at the regional scale was done for CERES-Maize (Xiong et al. 2005),
and found that the simulated yields in the Jilin province of Northeast China, overestimated
historical yields from statistical records (China National Agricultural Statistics) slightly, but
more closely approximated the yields from agronomic experiments (Tao et al. 2006).
To account for higher CO2 concentrations in the future, CERES was modified to account
for the direct effects of CO2 on photosynthesis and evapotranspiration (ET) rates. Elevated
CO2 increases photosynthesis in C3 plants but the effect appears to be small in C4 plants.
These effects have incorporated in CERES by a multiplicative coefficient that increases
the daily potential dry matter production at optimum temperature and water availability,
summarized from observational studies (Cure et al. 1986; Kimball 1983). Elevated CO2 also
reduces ET in both C3 and C4 crops due to significant reductions in stomatal conductance
and, consequently, transpiration, which causes higher water use efficiency (WUE). ET was
calculated using the Priestley-Taylor method (Priestley and Taylor 1972) and a ratio was
applied to the calculation of transpiration rates to account for stomatal closure under higher
CO2 concentration (Hoogenboom et al. 1995).

2.3 Input data and scenarios runs

Climate data for the scenario runs was developed as follows. The baseline scenario used
PRECIS simulated daily data for the period 1961–1990, with the CO2 concentration set to
330ppm. Two climate change scenarios (A2 and B2) for the periods 2011–2040 (2020),
2041–2070 (2050), and 2071–2100 (2080) were generated. The design of the climate change
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210 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

experiment and extraction of the daily PRECIS data is explained in UKCIP (2002) and
Jones et al. (2004) and uses a pattern scaling technique. All daily PRECIS output data were
processed and adapted to the needs input climate files managed by DSSAT. Daily maximum
and minimum temperatures, precipitation, and solar radiation were used.
A digital map of China’s border was used as a background within ARC/INFO 8.0. Ac-
cording to the resolution of PRECIS, another layer with the regional model grid (50 km ×
50 km ) was created as the simulation resolution, ultimately, there were 2622 grids classified
as arable land in China based on land use map of China (Liu et al. 2002). The soil file was
obtained by overlaying the regional model grid coverage with the digital Soil Map of China
at a scale of 1:1000 000, based on the classification of the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO and UNESCO 1988). A spatial data processing method described in detail by Knox
et al. (2000) was used to transfer soil properties of agricultural soil from mapping units into
the 50 km×50 km grid unit, and to aggregate the soil properties into median values for topsoil
(0–30 cm) and subsoil (30–100 cm) from the original values distributed across each profile
layer, so that averaged soil properties were generated for each 50 × 50 km polygon. Repre-
sentative crop varieties and detail of agronomic management were selected for all grids in
each province based on literatures from nearby experimental data (Tao et al. 2006). Areas of
rice, wheat, maize for the 1990s in each grid were downscaled from maps of the distribution
of cropland in China (Froling et al. 2002; Qiu et al. 2002) using a resampling method (Dejan
et al. 2003) in ARC/INFO 8.0.
Using the CERES models, a baseline scenario was run from 1961 to 1990, with 330 ppm
CO2 concentration. The climate change scenarios were run from 2010 to 2100 under different
CO2 concentration of 330 ppm; and CO2 increases as described by IPCC SRES A2 and B2
(Nakicenovic et al. 2000). This combination of runs was chosen to represent change in crop
yield with and without CO2 fertilization effect. The total number of runs was 3067740 (2622
grids × 3 crops × 2 climate change scenarios × 2 CO2 levels (A2 or B2, and 330 ppm)
× 90 years (2010–2100) + 2622 grids × 3 crops × 30 years (baseline: 1961–1990)). The
output data extracted for analysis are crop yield per unit area, expressed in kilogram per
hectare, which is displayed in thematic digital maps. The mean crop yields were averaged
over 1961 to 1900, 2010 to 2040, 2041 to 2070, and 2071 to 2100 (Baseline 2020, 2050,
and 2080, respectively) under the two scenarios. The three crops were simulated for all grids
(Mm,n,i,r, j ), where m denotes the climate scenarios (A2 and B2), n is the period (2020, 2050
and 2080), i is the crop type (rice, wheat and maize), r denotes whether the CO2 fertilization
is considered, j is the number of the grid. The mean yield change for the whole of China
(ycm,n,i,r ) was computed as follows:

2622 
 
2622
Mm,n,i,r, j − M0,i, j
ycm,n,i,r = × 100% × Ai, j Ai, j (1)
j=1
M0,i, j j=1

where M0,i, j stands for the mean yield of i crop at baseline in number j grid, and Ai denotes
the arable area of icrop in number j grid.

2.4 Threshold identification for national food security analysis

We suggest appropriate criteria for the identification of a critical threshold of food production.
We assume that three main food crops are of primary interest: rice, wheat and maize. The
majority of rice in China is irrigated, and most of the wheat and maize are rainfed, therefore
only irrigated rice and rainfed wheat and maize were considered in the analysis. We further
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Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 211

30

20
Change of harvest Yield per unit

10

0
area %

-10

rice
-20 wheat
maize
-30 rice*
wheat*
maize *
-40
0 1 2 3 4 5
Mean temperature increase in China (°C)

Fig. 1 The relationship between mean yield changes, averaged across China for each crop, with mean tem-
perature change. Full line denotes the yield changes without CO2 fertilization effects, dashed line includes
CO2 fertilization effects in the simulation

assume that the total arable land in China does not change in the future due to urbanization,
land degradation and other factors, and neither does the proportion of each crop. Adaptation
was not taken into account because in this study are only consider whether a threshold exists
for food production using present management but with different temperature increases.
We use three critical conditions to identify the threshold for national food production. The
threshold represents a value of mean temperature increase beyond which: (1) Climate change
would harm crop yields for the three crops (rice, wheat and maize); (2) The extent of yield
decline is greater than 10% for all the three crops, and; (3) The yields of the three crops
consistently decline so that the slope of yield change (Figure 1) is below zero for the these
crops.
Food security is not only impacted by crop production, but also by changes in population,
the economy and technology, etc. Per capita availability of food for direct human consump-
tion has previously been used to address food security (Alexandratos 1999). We use the
consumption of cereals (all uses) per capita to identify critical food security thresholds in
China. The present total cereal supply is the mean of 1996–2000: 4.96 × 108 metric tons,
the yields are the means from 1996–2000 for wheat, rice and maize, which were extracted
from the Statistical Data for Chinese Agriculture (Editing Committee of China Agriculture
Yearbook).
China is one of the world’s largest and most volatile consumers of agricultural products.
Yet, for a country of its size and limited resource endowment, China’s agricultural import
levels are modest (Gale 2002). The country’s goal of food self-sufficiency (95%) has meant
that a net import of cereals exceeding 5% of its aggregate consumption has only occurred
in exceptional years during the recent period of quantum increases in domestic demand.
Generally China has been close to 100% self-sufficiency (Alexandrateos 1999). We assume
that the net import of cereals or international trade does not exceed 5% of its present level:
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212 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

0.248 × 108 metric tons. The mean yield per hectare for all crops has increased from 1210
kg/ha in 1961 to 4830kg/ha in 1998, resulting in an average increase of 3.81% per year (Tong
et al. 2003), developments in agricultural technology (e.g. the use of chemical fertilizers,
new varieties of rice, etc.) has played an important role in this increase (Ellis and Wang
1997; Wang et al. 1995). The white paper on China’s food situation (issued by the State
Council of the People’s Republic of China in Oct. 1996, responding to the food security
conclusion of Brown (1995)) argues that: it is conservative and valid that the yield per unit
area can show an average 1% increase per year between 2000–2010, and a 0.7% increase
per year between 2010–2030, mainly due to the technology progress. We could not find any
literatures on forecasting yield change caused by technology progress after 2030. Therefore,
we assume that technology progress will lead to a 1% increase per year in yield per unit area
during 2000–2010, a 0.7% increase during 2010–2030, and 0% after 2030. This technological
growth assumption, which is very conservative, is more consistent with the IPCC SRES B2
scenario. The total national grain supply (Ym,n,r ) can be calculated as follows (2) or (3):


q
Ym,n,r = (yi × (1 + ycm,n,i,r )(1+1%)10 (1+7%)n−2010 × Ai )+Y2 (2010 < n < 2030)
i=1

(2)

q
Ym,n,r = (yi × (1 + ycm,n,i,r )(1 + 1%)10 (1 + 7%)20 × Ai ) + Y2 (n ≥ 2030) (3)
i=1

where, Ym,n,r is total grain supply under scenario m, at period n, with or without CO2 fertil-
ization effect (r ), yi is the actual yield per unit area of crop i at present, q denotes the grain
crops to be incorporated in the calculation, all crops yields except rice, wheat, and maize are
assumed unchanged in future, (1 + 1%)10 represents a growth rate of 1% per annum from
2000–2010 in crop yield due to technology progress, (1 + 0.7%)n−2010 implies a growth rate
of 0.7% per annum from 2010–2030 and the growth rate is 0% after 2030, Y2 is the amount
of imported food, which is set to the 5% of present food supply based on existing government
policy (0.248 ×108 metric tons), all other factors are the same as in formula (1).
China is making progress towards improving food security, as measured by the per capita
availability of food for direct human consumption. From 1978 to 2001, per capita consumption
of cereal increased from 318 kg (1978) to 414kg (1996). A threshold of more than 400 kg per
capita can meet the basic human demand, and also satisfy the requirements of other sectors
(e.g. livestock, industry, etc.). Although the 300–400 kg level per capita can meet the basic
demand for food, the scarcity of cereals in other sectors could raise food prices and other
commodities, and hinder sustained economic growth. Therefore, we use a threshold for food
security, of 400 kg per capita which is assumed to represent a threshold of cereal supply for
sustained economic growth. 300 kg per capita is assumed as a threshold of cereal supply
to meet basic demand, so that future food security in China could be threatened if national
production of cereal falls less than 300 kg per capita.

3 Results

Table 3 indicates the change in yield per unit area averaged across all grids for different crops
sorted by scenario and period. This table does not reflect how yields might change as farmers
make adaptations, such as changing planting dates or switching varieties.
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Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 213

3.1 The impact of climate change on crop yields

First, we present the relative yield changes due to climate change without incorporating CO2
fertilizer effect (Table 3). For all three crops, averaged across the country, mean harvest yields
per unit area generally decrease under both A2 and B2 in all periods (2020, 2050, and 2080).
This decrease can be attributed in large part to the acceleration in maturation (Sinha 1992;
wolf and Van Diepen 1995; Maytı̀n et al. 1995) due to temperature increase, a decrease in
water availability (Tao et al. 2003a,b), and poor vernalization, e.g. inadequate vernalization
in winter wheat due to higher temperature causes low flower bud initiation and ultimately
reduces yields (Harrison et al. 2000). For rice, yields are expected to decline by 16.8% and
12.4% by 2080 compared with current yields for A2 and B2 scenarios, respectively. Wheat
yields are projected to decline by 20.4% and 11.4% by 2080 relative to the present for A2
and B2 scenarios, respectively. Maize shows the most negative effects under the two climate
change scenarios, with a 36.4% and 26.9% yield decrease by 2080 contrasting to present
for the A2 and B2 respectively. Preliminary results indicate that the projected yields with
A2 and B2 scenarios are similar, with B2 having slightly less negative impacts than A2, and
the magnitude of yield decreases increases over time. A more detailed explanation of yield
change and yield change variability can be obtained from Lin et al. (2005).
Table 3 shows the relative yield changes for the three main crops for China with CO2
fertilization effects; the three crops are shown to increase under both A2 and B2 scenarios
in most periods, duo to increased photosynthesis and decreased evapotranspiration under
elevated CO2 levels. It appears that rice would be the least favoured crop insofar as CO2
fertilization is concerned, resulting in a +7.8%, −4.9% yield change under A2 and B2 in
2080, respectively. Wheat would be the most favoured crop, displaying a 23.5% and 13.7%
yield increase under A2 and B2 in 2080, respectively. The three crops would benefit more
from climate change under A2 than under B2. This is different to some other results which
show that C3 species (rice) should be more favoured under elevated CO2 concentration than
C4 species (maize) (Maayar et al. 1997; Parry et al. 2004); here maize shows a larger beneficial
effect than rice under both A2 and B2 scenarios. We propose two reasons for this disagreement
although we have not tested these using the crop models: (1) The vast majority of rice in
China is located in tropical and sub-tropical regions while wheat and maize is planted in mid
and high-latitudes (Qiu et al. 2003). Some assessments indicate that yields of some crops
in tropical locations would decrease generally even with minimal increases in temperature,
because such crops are already near their maximum temperature tolerance (McCarthy 2001);
(2) Rice is assumed to be irrigated in this analysis while the maize and wheat are rainfed.
Irrigation results in a more stable and higher harvest yield for rice in the baseline than rain-
fed wheat or maize. Therefore a given future yield increase in these three crops would cause
a lower percent change in yield of rice, and a higher percent change of wheat or maize.
Researches has shown that relative enhancement of growth owing to CO2 enrichment might
be greater under drought conditions than in wet soils because photosynthesis would occur
in a more CO2 responsive mode (André and DuCloux 1993; Samarakoon and Gifford 1995,
1996).

3.2 Critical thresholds of food production in China to temperature increase

For food production, rice, wheat, and maize account for 85% of total food supply in China
(Tong et al. 2003). However, consistently falling yields for all three crops is likely to reduce
food security because the declines may not be offset by modification of planting proportion
of these three crops.
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214 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

Figure 1 shows the relationship of yield change of the three crops with mean temperature
increase. It can be seen without the CO2 fertilization effect, yields decline at all warmer
temperatures, and the decline for all three crops (irrigated rice, rainfed maize and wheat) is
less than −10% when the temperature increase is greater than 1.8 ◦ C. Whereas, when the
temperature rises above 2.5 ◦ C, the slope of yield change is negative, i.e. yields would continue
to decrease as temperatures rise above 2.5 ◦ C. Therefore, keeping the present agronomic
management, arable land area, and planting proportions, according to our three conditions
for identification of a threshold (see Section 2.4) for food production, without considering
the CO2 fertilization effect, the critical threshold for food production is located near 2.5 ◦ C
(note that this threshold includes precipitation and radiation changes at 2.5 ◦ C).
With consideration of direct effects of CO2 , both climate change scenarios increase food
production dramatically in China for most of the time periods. Therefore, with incorporation
of direct CO2 effects a temperature threshold that could reduce food production per capita
below 300 kg is not exceeded.

3.3 Food security in China under IPCC SRES A2 and B2 scenarios

To explore the implications for food security, we incorporate the socio-economic scenarios
in the analysis. The total grain supply calculated by formula (2) or (3) (see Section 2.4) is
listed in Table 4, and grain supply per capita from 1978–2100 (the data from 1978 to 2000
is extracted from China Agriculture Yearbook) is illustrated in Figure 2.
Neglecting the CO2 fertilization effect, with A2 scenario, although the total grain supply is
more than 0.5 billion metric ton, the per capita grain supply shows a decline due to population
growth. In the 2020, the per capita grain supply is 328 kg, which can meet basic demands for
human consumption. After 2030, due to population growth and climate change, per capita
grain supply is less than our threshold 300 kg, to meet basic demands. With B2 scenario,
China’s population is maintained below 1.6 billion during 2020–2080, and the total grain
supply is more than 0.5 billion metric tons, and so per capita grain supply can be maintained
above 300 kg, which meets basic demand, but could affect sustained economic growth. To
summarize, without CO2 effects, the per capita grain supply fluctuates between 340–390 kg
during 2000–2080 (B2) and declines from 366 kg in 2000 to 221 kg in 2080 (A2).
With the CO2 fertilization effect included, there is an increase in total grain supply from
2020 to 2080 with both A2 and B2. For A2, although the total grain supply can be maintained

Table 4 China’s future food supply under climate change scenarios

Total food supply (108 metric tons)

Yield increases caused

by technology progress: 2000–2010:
1%, 2010–2030: 0.7%, 2030–2100:
0%;net import of cereals: 5%
of present aggregate consumption.
Emission With or without
scenarios CO2 fertilization effect 2020 2050 2080

A2 Without 5.24 5.32 5.00

With 6.24 6.92 7.04
B2 Without 5.53 5.77 5.37
With 5.80 6.08 5.74

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Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 215

412 413
406
400 390
B2/b
Food Supply per capita

387 372
(kg/captia.annum)

366
340

328 331 B2/a

311
300 A2/b

254
221
A2/a
200
1978 2020 2050 2080
Year

Fig. 2 The change in cereal supply per capita during 1978–2080 in China, 1978–2000 is extracted from
Yearbook of China’s agriculture, data from 2000 to 2080 are the results of simulation runs (a) without CO2
direct effects; (b) with CO2 direct effects

above 6 ×108 metric tons, because of population growth (Table 2), the per capita grain supply
shows decreasing trend (Figure 2), lying between 310 and 390 kg. This would meet the basic
demands but not for sustained economic growth. For B2, per capita grain supply exceeds 400
kg, which satisfies the demand for sustained economic growth.
IPCC SRES scenario B2 describes a medium prosperity society, governance is more
inward looking rather than global, cultural pluralism is strong along with environmental
protection (Gaffin et al. 2004), which is a mid-range estimate (van Lieshout et al. 2004) and
consistent with the anticipation of China’s population (United Nations 2004) and GDP (Prasad
2004). With B2, temperature increases by up to 2.0 ◦ C, and greenhouse gas concentrations rise
up to 561 ppm. Considering technology progress and international food trade, climate change
would not significantly threaten national food security whether CO2 fertilization is considered
or not. A2 implies a world of lower economic development and weak globalization, with high
population growth (Gaffin et al. 2004), which represents the upper range of climate change and
is different from reality (Cholaw 2003; Cholaw et al. 2003). Under A2, temperature increases
by up to 3.9 ◦ C, and greenhouse gas concentrations rise to 721 ppm. Even considering CO2
effects the grain supply would only meet basic demand for human consumption; without
CO2 effects, basic demand would not be meet, which could threaten national food security
from the 2030s onwards.

4 Discussion of uncertainties

This work highlights both the agricultural impacts of climate change and whether temperature
increases beyond a threshold at which ‘critical’ adverse effects would happen for two emission
scenarios. The results are based on the prediction of climate change by the Regional Climate
Model – PRECIS and regionalized IPCC SRES socio-economic development scenarios.
PRECIS is based on a medium global temperature increase compared to other climate models
(Houghton et al. 2001). Adaptation has not been taken into account in this analysis although
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216 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

it will undoubtedly play a vital role in modifying the food security and production results
presented here.
Common to many studies of climate change effects on agriculture using crop models,
several limitations must be noted. For instance, irrigation water is assumed not to limit rice
production (which, given limited and declining water availability in parts of China, is a major
assumption), the effects of pests (insect, diseases, weeds) are ignored under both current and
future conditions, no change in land use is assumed, and only mean changes in temperature
rather than extreme climate events are considered. Also, the beneficial effects of CO2 on crop
yield could be over- or underestimated because the complex experimental results may not be
reproduced under warmer, more variable and pest-infected field conditions. Comparison of
our simulation results with research on elevated CO2 impacts under FACE experimentation
(Pinter et al. 1996), shows our results overestimate the direct effects of CO2 , particularly for
wheat and maize. But for irrigated rice the predicted effects of CO2 fertilization are consistent
with some studies (e.g. Horie et al. 2000). In the crop model, the relationships relating the
effects of temperature and CO2 on plants are derived from experiments in which: crops are
grown under optimal conditions; the environment (e.g. CO2 concentration) is changed for
only part of the season; and, the acclimatization of the crop to changes in its environment, or
responses to stress is not taken completely into account in the model. Studies have shown that
in some crops grown under enhanced CO2 conditions, there is initially a large response, but
over time, this response declines and approaches that of crops grown under current CO2 levels
(Mall et al. 2004). The results presented here are therefore subject to significant uncertainty
and should be interpreted with caution.
For the identification of a critical threshold in national food production, we only used the
mean yield change of three crops to represent the threshold for food production. Using mean
yield changes ignores the impacts of extreme years or events, and could either underestimate
the negative consequences or overestimate the positive effects of climate change on food
production.
Climate change scenarios are associated with ‘incomplete’ knowledge and/or ‘unknow-
able’ knowledge. Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in projections of climate
change will require major advances in our understanding on the subject in the years to come
(Mall et al. 2004). Although using the RCM PRECIS improves the detail of climate pro-
jections (spatially and temporally) that are inadequately resolved by GCMs, it adds further
uncertainty to projections of climate change at the national scale, described by Rowell (2004).
For any change in temperature there is a range of concomitant changes in precipitation, ra-
diation and other meteorological factors, even using the same climate model. This can help
explain the sudden yield changes for all crops around 1.5 ◦ C (Figure. 1) in which almost
the same mean temperature increase (1.4 ◦ C under A2 and 1.5 ◦ C under B2) results in very
different yield changes. A wide range of potential regional patterns of climate change is
also associated with a particular change in temperature increase (Hitz et al. 2004). This is
particularly the case for precipitation. Therefore, the results of this study are specific to the
projection of PRECIS, and may differ from other climate model results.
There exists a wide repertoire of agronomic adaptation strategies, e.g. fertilizer application
rates, adjustments in planting dates, irrigation scheduling and technology, and cultivar traits
etc. This is potential significant factor in determining future crop growth that is not modeled
here. Effective agronomic adaptation strategies can decrease climate-induced yield losses
and enhance the gains from climate change (McCarthy et al. 2001) and so move the critical
threshold of temperature increase for food production. However, it is not possible to model the
full effectiveness of these agronomic adaptation strategies quantitatively for the whole China
at this time, due to its large size and diverse agronomic management. However, the distinct
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Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221 217

positive effects of CO2 fertilization effects, in our opinion, may require lots of adaptation
options, e.g. new cultivars, changes in management etc., because the algebraic relationship
employed in the crop models is based on the response of crops to higher CO2 under optimal
environment conditions, such conditions are not necessarily realistic. On the other hand,
our assumed yield increase per year caused by technology progress does contain adaptation
strategies, e.g. the use of fertilizer, GM (Genetically Modified) crops etc.
Food security in the future is highly dependent on China’s future population, socio-
economic and technological development. The IPCC SRES framework has increasingly
become a benchmark for modeling the human dimensions component of impacts assessment
(Gewin 2002). In addition, the scenarios synthesize a good deal more than anthropogenic
emissions and include economic, demographic, social and technological change, which can
be used to address food security issue according to different future development pathways.
However, the SRES only give us a global outlook rather than a regional one, although down-
scaling can provide finer scales for regional impact studies, there remain major limitations
(see Gaffin 2004). The socio-economic projections downscaled from SRES shows discrep-
ancy with other scenarios. For example, population projections in China by the SRES and
by the UN (2004) have differences. If we use the UN population projections in this analy-
sis, the per capita grain supply would not risk national food security with either A2 or B2,
even without CO2 fertilization effects. Technological progress and international food trade
play important roles in grain supply and food security, yet quantitative information on these
sectors has not been extracted from SRES documents. Such information, summarized from
the white paper on China’s food supply is conservative and valid, but the assumption of 1%
and 0.7% increase in yield per year due to technological progress neglects performance after
2030, and therefore likely underestimates future grain supply. In addition we have used the
same coefficients for technological progress in A2 and B2, in reality different development
pathways are likely to be associated with different rates of technological progress.

5 Conclusions

It is clear that climate change would have an impact on China’s food production, and therefore
on food security. Depending on the level of future emissions, the average temperature increase
in China by the end of the 21st century may be between 3 ◦ C and 4 ◦ C. Assuming no adaptation
beyond conservation projections of technological progress, climate change could harm food
production in China, causing the yields of the three main grain crops to decrease, if CO2
fertilization effects do not offset such changes; there may be benefits to food production in
China if the CO2 fertilization occurs to the extent that it is modeled here.
For food production without considering CO2 fertilization effects, we identify a threshold
(2.5 ◦ C) of average temperature increase beyond which all three crop yields would con-
sistently fall with increasing temperature. With simulated CO2 effects there would be no
adverse impacts on Chinese food production under the projected range of temperature in-
crease (0.9–3.9 ◦ C), we did not identify a threshold of temperature increase in this case.
China’s food security as measured by per capita grain supply, varies according to different
climate change scenarios. When the technology progress and international trade were incor-
porated in the analysis, without the CO2 fertilization effect, the per capita grain supply could
meet future basic demand (300 kg/capita) for direct human consumption in China with B2,
but not under A2; with the CO2 fertilization effect, the basic food demand could be satisfied
under both A2 and B2, and the additional food requirement for sustained economic growth
(400 kg/capita) could be met under B2.
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218 Climatic Change (2007) 81:205–221

Overall, the impact of climate change on China’s three main crops production would
have more positive than negative impacts if the direct effects of CO2 are included. However,
some factors and uncertainties have not been fully included in our analysis, e.g. the effects
of pests and diseases, future adaptation strategies, which would modify our results on food
production and critical thresholds. These analyses are based on one RCM (PRECIS) and
two emission scenarios (A2 and B2). Further analysis should reveal whether other climate
models and emission scenarios would show the same trends. The A2 scenario produces the
highest impact of climate change, showing the most negative effects on China’s future food
production, the impacts of the B2 scenario lie within China’s future development goals.

Acknowledgements This research was made possible by the fund from National Basic Research Program
of China (Project no. 2006CB400505) and from DRFRA of UK (project no.14703821). We thank Dr. Robin
Matthew (The Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, UK), and Dr. Ian Holman (Cranfield University, UK), for sug-
gestions and useful advice during Study visits to the UK, and Dr. Declan Conway (University of East Anglia,
UK) and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and corrections of this manuscript. The PRECIS
climate data used in this study were provided by Dr. Yinglong Xu and made available by the Institute of
Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
with support from the Hadley Centre for climate research and prediction, UK.

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