Effectiveness of using representative subsets of global climate models in future crop yield projections.

A - Papers appearing in refereed journals

Qian, B., Jing, Q., Cannon, A. J., Smith, W., Grant, B., Semenov, M. A., Xu, Y. and Ma, D. 2021. Effectiveness of using representative subsets of global climate models in future crop yield projections. Scientific Reports. 11, p. 20565. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99378-7

AuthorsQian, B., Jing, Q., Cannon, A. J., Smith, W., Grant, B., Semenov, M. A., Xu, Y. and Ma, D.
Abstract

Representative subsets of global climate models (GCMs) are often used in climate change impact studies to account for uncertainty in ensemble climate projections. However, the effectiveness of such subsets has seldom been assessed for the estimations of either the mean or the spread of the full ensembles. We assessed two different approaches that were employed to select 5 GCMs from a 20-member ensemble of GCMs from the CMIP5 ensemble for projecting canola and spring wheat yields across Canada under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 emission scenarios in the periods 2040-2069 and 2070-2099, based on crop simulation models. Averages and spreads of the simulated crop yields using the 5-GCM subsets selected by T&P and KKZ approaches were compared with the full 20-GCM ensemble. Our results showed that the 5-GCM subsets selected by the two approaches could produce full-ensemble means with a relative absolute error of 2.9 – 4.7% for canola and 1.5 – 2.2% for spring wheat, and covers 61.8 – 91.1% and 66.1 – 80.8% of the full-ensemble spread for canola and spring wheat, respectively. Our results also demonstrated that both approaches were very likely to outperform a subset of randomly selected 5 GCMs in terms of a smaller error and a larger range.

KeywordsClimate scenarios; Multi-GCM ensemble; Representative GCMs; T&P and KKZ methods; Climate change impact study; Canola; Wheat
Year of Publication2021
JournalScientific Reports
Journal citation11, p. 20565
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99378-7
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
FunderBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Natural Environment Research Council
Funder project or codeDesigning Future Wheat (DFW) [ISPG]
Publisher's version
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online18 Oct 2021
PublisherNature Publishing Group
ISSN2045-2322

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