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We utilize a global warming level (GWL) lens to evaluate global and regional patterns of agricultural impacts as global surface temperature increases, providing a unique perspective on the experience of stakeholders with continued warming in the 21st century. We analyze crop productivity outputs from 11 crop models simulating 5 climate models under 3 emissions scenarios across 4 crops within the AgMIP/ISIMIP Phase 3 ensemble. We categorize regional productivity changes (without adaptation) into 9 characteristic climate change response patterns, identifying consistent increases and decreases as well as non‐linear (peak or dip) responses indicative of inflection points reversing trends as GWLs increase. Many maize regions and pockets of wheat, rice and soybean show peak decrease patterns where initial increases may lull stakeholders into complacency or maladaptation before productivity shifts to losses at higher GWLs. Although the GWL perspective has proven useful in connecting diverse climate models and emissions scenarios, we identify multiple pitfalls that recommend proceeding with caution when applying this approach to climate impacts. Chief among these is that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations at any GWL depend on a climate model's transient climate response (TCR). Higher CO2 concentrations generally benefit crop productivity, so this leads to more pessimistic agricultural projections for so‐called "hot" models and can skew multi‐model ensemble results as models with high TCR are disproportionately likely to reach higher GWLs. While there are strong connections between many climatic impact‐drivers and GWLs, vulnerability and exposure components of food system risk are strongly dependent on development pathways. Plain Language Summary: This study uses the latest ensemble of crop and climate models with a framework to identify cropping systems and regions where non‐linear aspects of agricultural system response to climate change could lead to complacency or maladaptation. Results will help readers understand the different experiences and contextual adaptation needs for food systems in the coming decades. This framework could be widely applied across all impacts sectors. Analysis also highlights that climate models with particularly strong climate sensitivity lead more pessimistic projections by crop impacts, underscoring the need for special care in the use of climate model ensembles for impact assessments. Key Points: Climate change response patterns show regional farming systems where initial positive changes give way to long‐term detrimental impactsRegional and species‐dependent patterns of agricultural impacts on benchmark global warming levels prioritize risk management strategiesClimate models with high climate sensitivity have less CO2 benefit on a given global warming level (GWL) and are over‐represented in ensembles of higher GWLs [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical emulation allows combining advantageous features of statistical and process-based crop models for understanding the effects of future climate changes on crop yields. We describe here the development of emulators for nine process-based crop models and five crops using output from the Global Gridded Model Intercomparison Project (GGCMI) Phase 2. The GGCMI Phase 2 experiment is designed with the explicit goal of producing a structured training dataset for emulator development that samples across four dimensions relevant to crop yields: atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, temperature, water supply, and nitrogen inputs (CTWN). Simulations are run under two different adaptation assumptions: that growing seasons shorten in warmer climates, and that cultivar choice allows growing seasons to remain fixed. The dataset allows emulating the climatological-mean yield response of all models with a simple polynomial in mean growing-season values. Climatological-mean yields are a central metric in climate change impact analysis; we show here that they can be captured without relying on interannual variations. In general, emulation errors are negligible relative to differences across crop models or even across climate model scenarios; errors become significant only in some marginal lands where crops are not currently grown. We demonstrate that the resulting GGCMI emulators can reproduce yields under realistic future climate simulations, even though the GGCMI Phase 2 dataset is constructed with uniform CTWN offsets, suggesting that the effects of changes in temperature and precipitation distributions are small relative to those of changing means. The resulting emulators therefore capture relevant crop model responses in a lightweight, computationally tractable form, providing a tool that can facilitate model comparison, diagnosis of interacting factors affecting yields, and integrated assessment of climate impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistical emulation allows combining advantageous features of statistical and process-based crop models for understanding the effects of future climate changes on crop yields. We describe here the development of emulators for nine process-based crop models and five crops using output from the Global Gridded Model Intercomparison Project (GGCMI) Phase II. The GGCMI Phase II experiment is designed with the explicit goal of producing a structured training dataset for emulator development that samples across four dimensions relevant to crop yields: atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, temperature, water supply, and nitrogen inputs (CTWN). Simulations are run under two different adaptation assumptions: that growing seasons shorten in warmer climates, and that cultivar choice allows growing seasons to remain fixed. The dataset allows emulating the climatological mean yield response without relying on interannual variations; we show that these are quantitatively different. Climatological mean yield responses can be readily captured with a simple polynomial in nearly all locations, with errors significant only in some marginal lands where crops are not currently grown. In general, emulation errors are negligible relative to differences across crop models or even across climate model scenarios. We demonstrate that the resulting GGCMI emulators can reproduce yields under realistic future climate simulations, even though the GGCMI Phase II dataset is constructed with uniform CTWN offsets, suggesting that effects of changes in temperature and precipitation distributions are small relative to those of changing means. The resulting emulators therefore capture relevant crop model responses in a lightweight, computationally tractable form, providing a tool that can facilitate model comparison, diagnosis of interacting factors affecting yields, and integrated assessment of climate impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future changes in Earth system state will impact agricultural yields and, through these changed yields, can have profound impacts on the global economy. Global gridded crop models estimate the influence of these Earth system changes on future crop yields but are often too computationally intensive to dynamically couple into global multi-sector economic models, such as the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) and other similar-in-scale models. Yet, generalizing a faster site-specific crop model's results to be used globally will introduce inaccuracies, and the question of which model to use is unclear given the wide variation in yield response across crop models. To examine the feedback loop among socioeconomics, Earth system changes, and crop yield changes, rapidly generated yield responses with some quantification of crop response uncertainty are desirable. The Persephone v1.0 response functions presented in this work are based on the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Coordinated Climate-Crop Modeling Project (C3MP) sensitivity test data set and are focused on providing GCAM and similar models with a tractable number of rapid to evaluate dynamic yield response functions corresponding to a range of the yield response sensitivities seen in the C3MP data set. With the Persephone response functions, a new variety of agricultural impact experiments will be open to GCAM and other economic models: for example, examining the economic impacts of a multi-year drought in a key agricultural region and how economic changes in response to the drought can, in turn, impact the drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future changes in Earth system state will impact agricultural yields and, through these changed yields, can have profound impacts on the global economy. Global gridded crop models estimate the influence of these Earth system changes on future crop yields, but are often too computationally intensive to dynamically couple into global multi-sector economic models, such as GCAM and other similar-in-scale models. Yet, generalizing a faster site-specific crop model's results to be used globally will introduce inaccuracies, and the question of which model to use is unclear given the wide variation in yield response across crop models. To examine the feedback loop among socioeconomics, Earth system changes, and crop yield changes, rapidly generated yield responses with some quantification of crop response uncertainty are desirable. The Persephone v1.0 response functions presented in this work are based on the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Coordinated Climate-Crop Modeling Project (C3MP) sensitivity test data set and are focused on providing GCAM and similar models with a tractable number of rapid to evaluate, dynamic yield response functions corresponding to a range of the yield response sensitivities seen in the C3MP data set. With the Persephone response functions, a new variety of agricultural impact experiments will be open to GCAM and other economic models; for example, examining the economic impacts of a multi-year drought in a key agricultural region and how economic changes in response to the drought can, in turn, impact the drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) has developed novel methods for Coordinated Global and Regional Assessments (CGRA) of agriculture and food security in a changing world. The present study aims to perform a proof of concept of the CGRA to demonstrate advantages and challenges of the proposed framework. This effort responds to the request by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the implications of limiting global temperature increases to 1.5°C and 2.0°C above pre-industrial conditions. The protocols for the 1.5°C/2.0°C assessment establish explicit and testable linkages across disciplines and scales, connecting outputs and inputs from the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs), Half a degree Additional warming, Prognosis and Projected Impacts (HAPPI) and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) ensemble scenarios, global gridded crop models, global agricultural economics models, site-based crop models and within-country regional economics models. The CGRA consistently links disciplines, models and scales in order to track the complex chain of climate impacts and identify key vulnerabilities, feedbacks and uncertainties in managing future risk. CGRA proof-of-concept results show that, at the global scale, there aremixed areas of positive and negative simulated wheat and maize yield changes, with declines in some breadbasket regions, at both 1.5°C and 2.0°C. Declines are especially evident in simulations that do not take into account direct CO2 effects on crops. These projected global yield changes mostly resulted in increases in prices and areas of wheat and maize in two global economics models. Regional simulations for 1.5°C and 2.0°C using site-based crop models had mixed results depending on the region and the crop. In conjunction with price changes from the global economics models, productivity declines in the Punjab, Pakistan, resulted in an increase in vulnerable households and the poverty rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]