Impacts of climate change on corn yield and the length of corn growing season in U.S. Corn Belt

Abstract:

This study is a result of a USDA sponsored project titled Useful to Usable (U2U): “Transforming Climate Variability and Change Information for Cereal Crop Producers”. The objective of this project is to improve farm resilience and profitability in the U.S. Corn Belt region by transforming existing meteorological dataset into usable knowledge and tools for the agricultural community.

In this study, we conducted the Hybrid-Maize corn growth simulation model at 18 sites across the U.S. Corn Belt with 5 CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) climate models. The crop model was running for two time periods: 1981-2010 (‘current’) and 2041-2070 (‘future’). We also developed a “delta” method, which combines the current climate variability with the “mean” model projected climate change.

The results indicate that under the ‘future’ climate, growing degree days (GDD) projected corn growing season (from planting date reach to maturity required GDD) are shortened due to the increasing of mean temperature. Compare to the contemporary simulations, the shorter growing season under “future” scenario brings lower attainable yields if farmers using the same cultivar.

This presentation will focus on the details about the model simulations, the interactive process employed in developing the simulations, the implications of the results, the uncertainties, and the lessons learned.