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This paper constructs theoretical and empirical models to investigate, under the influences of China’s hukou policy, the relationship between spikes in temperatures and temporary migrations of Chinese rural residents. Applying weather data from both the provincial and county levels, the paper first demonstrates the negative impacts of extremely high temperatures on agricultural production. Then, using a fixed effect model, and applying an individual-level panel dataset, which includes information from more than 30,000 Chinese rural residents, the paper shows that the likelihood of a rural resident’s future choice to work outside his or her village increases when crop yields decrease. This result confirms the hypothesis built in the paper’s utility maximization theoretical model of an individual rural resident. To mitigate the risks brought about by disaster-induced agricultural production decreases, the paper proposes reforms of, and improvements in existing agricultural policy insurance services.

Nonlinearity and adaptation effect are rarely taken into consideration in the existing literature of empirical studies on climate change impacts, which may lead to bias estimation of the impacts on agricultural production. This paper aims to reassess the impacts on crop yields (rice, wheat, and maize) by incorporating the terms of nonlinearity and adaptation into a provincial panel data model and further study the impacts of future climate change under the represented concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios. Results reveal that the historical warming temperature benefits rice but harm wheat and maize productions, and decreasing precipitation benefits rice and maize but harm wheat production. Adaptation can significantly mitigate the negative impacts. Under RCP4.5 and RCP8.0, after adaptation, the yield changes attributed to future climate change vary from 0.66% to 0.98% for rice, -0.65% to -0.84% for wheat, and -0.24 to 0.08% for maize. The shifts of means of climatic variables impose no challenge on national food security of China.