The statistical emulators of GGCMI phase 2: responses of year-to-year variation of crop yield to CO₂, temperature, water and nitrogen perturbations

Abstract

Abstract. Understanding the impact of climate change on year-to-year variation of crop yield is critical to global food stability and security. While crop model emulators are believed to be lightweight tools to replaces the models per se, few emulators have been developed to capture such interannual variation of crop yield in response to climate variability. In this study, we developed a statistical emulator with machine learning algorithm to reproduce the response of year-to-year variation of four crop yield to CO2 (C), temperature (T), water (W) and nitrogen (N) perturbations defined in the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison Project (GGCMI) phase 2 experiment. The emulators were able to explain more than 92 % variance of simulated yield and performed well in capturing the year-to-year variation of global average and gridded crop yield over current croplands in the baseline. With the changes in CTWN perturbations, the emulators could well reproduce the year-to-year variation of crop yield over most current cropland. The variation of R and the mean absolute error was small under the single CTWN perturbations and dual factor perturbations. These emulators thus provide statistical response surfaces of yield, including both its mean and interannual variability, to climate factors. They could facilitate spatiotemporal downscaling of crop model simulation, projecting the changes in crop yield variability in the future, and serving as a lightweight tool of multi-model ensemble simulation. The emulators enhanced the flexibility of crop yield estimates and expanded the application of large-ensemble simulation of crop yield under climate change.