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Assessing the impacts of temperature variations on rice yield in China

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Abstract

Using a unique county-level panel on single-season paddy rice yield and daily weather outcomes from 1996 to 2009, we examined the impacts of weather variations on paddy rice yield in China. We have five key findings: (i) in contrast to nearly all previous studies focusing on rice production in tropical and subtropical regions, we discovered that higher daily minimum temperature during the vegetative stage increased paddy rice yield; (ii) consistent with previous assessments, we found that higher daily maximum temperature during the vegetative and ripening stages reduced paddy rice yield; (iii) the impacts of sunshine duration and rainfall on paddy rice yield differed across the plant’s growth stages; (iv) estimated weather effects on yield differed by rice variety; and (v) weather variations caused a net economic loss of $17.4–53.0 million to China’s single-season paddy rice sector during the sample period, depending on econometric estimation strategies.

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Notes

  1. Available at: http://zzys.agri.gov.cn/nongshi.aspx

  2. The Chinese-language versions of the two webpages are available at: http://data.stats.gov.cn/ and http://tongji.cnki.net/kns55/index.aspx, respectively.

  3. Diagnostic test statistics suggest that multicollinearity is not a major issue.

  4. We obtained information on rice varieties planted in different regions in China from China Rice Data Center, see http://www.ricedata.cn/variety/

  5. Here, we can only measure the direct impact of weather variations on paddy rice yields and cannot measure the indirect impact of weather on paddy rice planted acres and market prices of rice.

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Acknowledgments

This research is partly supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. JBK160210) and by the EfD Initiative of the University of Gothenburg through Sida.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Guanghua School of Management and IEPR, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Shuai Chen

  2. Research Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, No. 55 Guanghuacun Street, Chengdu, 610074, China

    Xiaoguang Chen

  3. National School of Development, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Jintao Xu

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  1. Shuai Chen
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  2. Xiaoguang Chen
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  3. Jintao Xu
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Correspondence to Xiaoguang Chen.

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Seniority of authorship is shared equally

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Chen, S., Chen, X. & Xu, J. Assessing the impacts of temperature variations on rice yield in China. Climatic Change 138, 191–205 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-016-1707-0

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