title: An assessment of climate change impacts on maize yields in Hebei Province of China.
abstract: The climate change impacts on maize yields are quantified in this paper using statistical models with panel data from 3731 farmers' observations across nine sample villages in Hebei Province of China. The marginal impacts of climate change and the simulated impacts on maize yields based on scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathways 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 from the global climate models of Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate version 5 (MIROC5) and Meteorological Research Institute Coupled General Circulation Model version 3 (MRI-CGCM3) were then calculated, analyzed, and explained. The results indicate that, first, the most important finding was that climate change impacts on maize yields were significant and a 1°C warming or a 1mm decrease in precipitation resulted in a 150.255kg or a 1.941kg loss in maize yields per hectare, respectively. Second, villages with latitudes of less than 39.832 and longitudes of more than 114.839 in Hebei province suffered losses due to warm weather. Third, the simulated impacts for the full sample are all negative based on scenarios from MIROC5, and their magnitudes are more than those of MRI-CGCM3 are. Based on scenarios in the 2050s, the biggest loss for maize yields per hectare for the full sample accounts for about one-tenth of the mean maize yield from 2004 to 2010, and all of the villages are impacted. Hence, it is important to help farms adopt an adaptation strategy to tackle the risk of loss for maize yields from climate change, and it is necessary to develop agricultural synthesis services as a public adaptation policy at the village level to interact with the adaptation strategy at the farm level.
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, 17 Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, China. Electronic address: chenyf@cau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yongfu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 12 Zhongguancun South Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China. Electronic address: hanxinru@caas.cn.
authors.forename: Xinru
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, 17 Qinghua East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, China. Electronic address: siweicau@126.com.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Si
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Rural Economy, Ministry of Agriculture of China, 56 Zhuanta Hutong, Xicheng District, Beijing 100810, China. Electronic address: wuzg@rcre.org.cn.
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, 1-1 Ohwashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8686, Japan. Electronic address: chienp@affrc.go.jp.
authors.forename: Hsiaoping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chien
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, 3-1-3 Kannondai, Tsukuba 305-8604, Japan. Electronic address: kokamoto@affrc.go.jp.
authors.forename: Katsuo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Okamoto
keywords: Marginal impact; Scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathways; Simulated impact; Statistical model