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Increasing concentrations of aerosols offset the benefits of climate warming on rice yields during 1980–2008 in Jiangsu Province, China

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Abstract

The impacts of climate change on crop yield have increasingly been of concern. In this study, we investigated the impacts of trends in sunshine duration (S) and maximum temperature (T max) on rice yields in Jiangsu Province at both the provincial and county level during the period from 1980 to 2008. The results showed that although S and T max both were positively correlated with rice yields, the combined impacts of the decreasing trend of S (0.37 h/decade) and the increasing trend of T max (0.34 °C/decade) in August caused a reduction of 0.16 t ha−1 in rice yields (approximately 1.8 %) in Jiangsu Province, and the trend of S had played a dominant role in the yield losses. Further analyses suggest that the increasing concentration of aerosols from rapid economic development in Jiangsu Province has caused a significant solar dimming at least since 1960, making mitigations and adaptation measurements on regional haze impact imperative. Our study provides a prototype for detecting negative feedback on agricultural production caused by intensified anthropogenic activities that aim only to create rapid economic development.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB955404), the Fundamental Research Funds from the Central Universities, the International Cooperation Project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012DFG20710), and the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University (2010-ZY-10, 2011-KF-06). We would also like to express our gratitude toward Editor Wolfgang Cramer for comments and suggestions on earlier draft of the article.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Beijing, 100875, China

    Jiabing Shuai, Zhao Zhang, Xiaofei Liu, Yi Chen, Pin Wang & Peijun Shi

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  1. Jiabing Shuai
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  2. Zhao Zhang
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  3. Xiaofei Liu
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  5. Pin Wang
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Correspondence to Zhao Zhang or Peijun Shi.

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Shuai, J., Zhang, Z., Liu, X. et al. Increasing concentrations of aerosols offset the benefits of climate warming on rice yields during 1980–2008 in Jiangsu Province, China. Reg Environ Change 13, 287–297 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-012-0332-3

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