Interactions Between Climate Mean and Variability Drive Future Agroecosystem Vulnerability

ABSTRACT Agriculture is crucial for global food supply and dominates the Earth’s land surface. It is unknown, however, how slow but relentless changes in climate mean state, versus random extreme conditions arising from changing variability, will affect agroecosystems’ carbon fluxes, energy fluxes, and crop production. We used an advanced weather generator to partition changes in mean climate state versus variability for both temperature and precipitation, producing forcing data to drive factorial-design simulations of US Midwest agricultural regions in the Energy Exascale Earth System Model. We found that an increase in temperature mean lowers stored carbon, plant productivity, and crop yield, and tends to convert agroecosystems from a carbon sink to a source, as expected; it also can cause local to regional cooling in the earth system model through its effects on the Bowen Ratio. The combined effect of mean and variability changes on carbon fluxes and pools was nonlinear, that is, greater than each individual case. For instance, gross primary production reduces by 9%, 1%, and 13% due to change in mean temperature, change in temperature variability, and change in both temperature mean and variability, respectively. Overall, the scenario with change in both temperature and precipitation means leads to the largest reduction in carbon fluxes (−16% gross primary production), carbon pools (−35% vegetation carbon), and crop yields (−33% and −22% median reduction in yield for corn and soybean, respectively). By unambiguously parsing the effects of changing climate mean versus variability and quantifying their nonadditive impacts, this study lays a foundation for more robust understanding and prediction of agroecosystems’ vulnerability to 21st-century climate change.