Assessment of Climate Change and Atmospheric CO2 Impact on Winter Wheat in the Pacific Northwest Using a Multimodel Ensemble

Simulations of crop yields under climate change are subject to uncertainties whose quantification is important for effective use of projected results for adaptation and mitigation strategies. In the US Pacific Northwest (PNW), studies based on single crop models and weather projections downscaled from a few general circulation models (GCM) have indicated mostly beneficial effects of climate change on winter wheat production for most of the twenty-first century. In this study we evaluated the uncertainty in the projection of winter wheat yields at seven sites in the PNW using five crop growth simulation models (CropSyst, APSIM, DSSAT, STICS, and EPIC) and daily weather data downscaled from 14 GCMs for 2 representative concentration pathways (RCP) of atmospheric CO2 (RCP4.5 and 8.5). All crop models were calibrated for high, medium, and low precipitation dryland sites and one irrigated site using 1979–2010 as the baseline period. All five models were run from years 2000 to 2100 to evaluate the effect of future conditions (precipitation, temperature and atmospheric CO2) on winter wheat grain yield. Simulations of future climatic conditions and impacts were organized into three 31-year periods centered around the years 2030, 2050, and 2070. All models predicted a decrease of the growing season length and crop transpiration, and increase in transpiration-use efficiency, biomass production, and yields, but with substantial variation that increased from the 2030s to 2070s. Most of the uncertainty (up to 85%) associated with predictions of yield was due to variation among the crop models. Maximum uncertainty due to GCMs was 15%which was less than the maximum uncertainty associated with the interaction between the crop model effect and GCM effect (25%). Large uncertainty associated with the interaction between crop models and GCMs indicated that the effect of GCM on yield varied among the five models. The mean of the ensemble of all crop models and GCMs provided a robust indication of positive effects of future environmental conditions on winter wheat yield during this century at all sites studied, with greater beneficial effect under water stressed conditions than under well-watered conditions, and under RCP8.5 than RCP4.5.