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Tea (Camellia sinensis L.), as one of the most important cash crops in China, plays an important role in increasing farmers' incomes and guaranteeing a high quality of life. Tea production has been greatly influenced by both climate change and economic development in China. However, without a scientific understanding of the interaction mechanism of climate change and the impetus from rapid economic development on tea production practices in China, it is difficult to take adaptive actions to meet the climate change challenges for the tea industry. In this paper, we firstly assessed the potential impacts of climate change on tea climate suitability by empirical formula calculation using meteorological data; then, the effects from the additional climatic stress due to warming on tea production were detected with the annual statistical tea yield record on a municipal level. The contribution of socioeconomic development to the tea industry was evaluated with the comparison of the movement of China's national economy's and tea industry's gravity center during the period of 1987–2017. Finally, a conceptual adaptation framework was built to demonstrate the interaction mechanisms between climate change, tea production, and the economic development. The results showed that there was a negative impact of climate change on tea production in mainland China, with the percentage of high tea climate suitability (>0.9) areas dropping by 45% to 32%, while opportunities of enlarging the tea cultivating area emerged in the north tea production region where the tea climate suitability increased. We found that the tea planting area expanded northwards from 33° N in 1987 to 35° N in 2017 to take advantage of the favorable climatic resources due to warming, and tea planting decreased at an altitude of 100–400 m while increasing to higher altitude of 400–2000 m to avoid hot temperature damage and seek the optimum environment in high mountainous areas for tea production. In addition, the tea production moved westward along the longitude, decreasing obviously at 117–121° E while increasing significantly at 98–104° E and 107–110° E. Meanwhile, the tea production gravity center showed a westward movement consistent with the national economic gravity center moving trend, which means that tea industry development was driven by multiple socioeconomic factors and climatic forcings. A conceptual framework was built in this paper, aiming to show a robust adaptation mechanism for the tea system to maximize the benefits and minimize the damages from the altered climatic resources under rapid economic development in mainland China. The results in this study would help deepen the understanding of the adaptation process and practices for tea production in mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intensification of heat stress in a changing climate poses great threats to both human health and labor productivity. It is of great practical importance to assess the impacts of climate-induced heat stress on labor productivity and to develop effective adaptation strategies. In this paper, an integrated optimization-based productivity restoration modeling framework is proposed for the first time to develop the optimal policies for adaptation to climate change. To address underlying uncertainties associated with climate and labor management systems, we take into account ensemble projections from five global climate models (GCMs) under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) and inexact system costs. The system costs, including direct and indirect costs such as management costs, energy costs, and labor costs, are presented as interval numbers due to inherent uncertainty caused by population growth, technology development, and other social-economic factors. Uncertain information can be effectively communicated into the optimization processes in this study to generate optimal and reliable decision alternatives. We find that the increased Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) will lead to a large reduction in labor capacities over China except for the Tibetan Plateau under both RCPs by the end of the 21st century. The less developed regions tend to achieve the minimum system cost by having labor productivity recovered through working overtime due to the relatively low cost of overtime. This could result in more heat-related work injuries in the less developed regions. Since the less developed regions are not heat-prone areas in China, the changing climate would be a more dangerous threat and cause more damages to these regions where the residents are less acclimatized to heat stress. Moreover, we obtain a range of minimum system costs from 1.86 to 8.97 billion dollars under RCP2.6 and from 9.42 to 32.31 billion dollars under RCP8.5 (about 0.2% of China's GDP in 2019, 0.01% of China's GDP projected in 2100 under a sustainable socio-economic development scenario) for the restoration of labor productivity in a warming climate. We argue that urgent actions are needed to mitigate global warming impacts on labor productivity. • An integrated optimization modeling framework is developed to achieve optimal labor productivity restoration in a warming climate. • Various uncertainties are addressed through ensemble climate projections and interval programming models. • Intensification of heat stress leads to a large decrease in labor capacity over China except for the Tibetan Plateau. • More losses in working hours are projected for moderate labor activities compared to light and heavy labor activities. • Less developed regions tend to have more working hours recovered by working overtime than air conditioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the distributional effects of high temperature on worker performance and the effectiveness of adaptation when capital investments such as air conditioning are not feasible. Using a longitudinal data set of 3196 professional archers in 57 competitions during 2010–2016 in China, which includes accurate performance measures at the individual‐by‐contest level, we show that heat causes more uneven performance distributions by hurting the bottom performers more than the top performers. More frequent heat reduces average performance and raises distributional inequality more than increases in average temperature. Gaining experience and long‐term acclimatization together can mitigate 70% of the heat impacts, demonstrating the potential of adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have shown that climate change will impose severe challenges on agriculture with profound implications. Although some hypothetical simulations have suggested that an optimal re‐arrangement of the growing season can substantially mitigate yield losses under future climate, no causal estimate has been provided on quantifying the extent to which farmers are adapting through growing‐season adjustments. Using a novel microlevel data with detailed crop progress information in China over 1993–2013, we show that both planting dates and growing season lengths significantly respond to contemporaneous temperature and precipitation. Our estimates suggest that, for a median site in our sample, the adaptive behavior in growing season adjustments can lead to a two to six days earlier planting date and another three to six days shorter growing season by the end of this century. These induced adjustments can avoid up to 9% of the crop damages caused by climate change. However, our empirical analysis does not find clear evidence of long‐run response or accompanied input adjustments, suggesting potential for developing policies and tools to further aid the adaptive process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has and will continue to exert significant effects on social economy, natural environment, and human life. Research on the climatic suitability of crops is critical for mitigating and adapting to the negative impacts of climate change on crop production. In the study, we developed the climate suitability model of maize and investigated the climate suitability of summer maize during the base period (1981–2010) and two future periods of 2031–2060 (2040s) and 2071–2100 (2080s) in the North China Plain (NCP) based on BCC-CSM2-MR model (BCC) from the Coupled Model Comparison Program (CMIP6) under two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) 245 and SSP585. The phenological shift of maize under future climate scenarios was simulated by the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM). The results showed that the root mean square errors (RMSE) between observations and projections for sunshine suitability (SS), temperature suitability (ST), precipitation suitability (SP), and integrated climate suitability (SZ) during the whole growth period were 0.069, 0.072, 0.057, and 0.040, respectively. Overall, the BCC projections for climate suitability were in suitable consistency with the observations in the NCP. During 1981–2010, the SP, ST, and SZ were high in the north of the NCP and low in the south. The SP, ST, and SZ showed a downward trend under all the future climate scenarios in most areas of NCP while the SS increased. Therein, the change range of SP and SS was 0–0.1 under all the future climate scenarios. The ST declined by 0.1–0.2 in the future except for the decrease of more than 0.3 under the SSP585 scenario in the 2080s. The decrease in SZ in the 2040s and 2080s under both SSP scenarios varied from 0 to 0.2. Moreover, the optimum area decreases greatly under future scenarios while the suitable area increases significantly. Adjusting sowing data (SD) would have essential impacts on climate suitability. To some extent, delaying SD was beneficial to improve the climate suitability of summer maize in the NCP, especially under the SSP585 scenario in the 2080s. Our findings can not only provide data support for summer maize production to adapt to climate change but also help to propose agricultural management measures to cope with future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of perennial grass species into the current food production systems, especially in the agropastoral regions worldwide, may produce multiple benefits including, among others, a more stable productivity and a smaller eco-environmental footprint. However, one of the fundamental challenges facing the large-scale adoption of such grass species is their ability to withstand the vagaries of winter in these regions. Here, we present a comprehensive evaluation of the winter hardiness of 50 indigenous Chinese cultivars of alfalfa, a high-quality leguminous perennial grass, in comparison with six introduced U.S. cultivars in a multi-site field experiment in northern China. Our results reveal that indigenous cultivars have stronger winter hardiness than introduced cultivars. Cultivars native in the north performed better than southern cultivars, suggesting that suitability evaluation is an unavoidable step proceeding any regional implementations. Our results also show that the metric we used to assess alfalfa's winter hardiness, the average score index (ASI), produced more consistent results than another more-widely used metric of winter survival rate (WSR). These findings offer a systematic field evidence that supports regional cropping system adjustment and production system betterment to ensure food security under climate change in the region and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]