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In the North China Plain, the grain yield of irrigated wheat-maize cropping system has been steadily increasing in the past decades under a significant warming climate. This paper combined regional and field data with modeling to analyze the changes in the climate in the last 40 years, and to investigate the influence of changes in crop varieties and management options to crop yield. In particular, we examined the impact of a planned adaptation strategy to climate change -'Double-Delay' technology, i.e., delay both the sowing time of wheat and the harvesting time of maize, on both wheat and maize yield. The results show that improved crop varieties and management options not only compensated some negative impact of reduced crop growth period on crop yield due to the increase in temperature, they have contributed significantly to crop yield increase. The increase in temperature before over-wintering stage enabled late sowing of winter wheat and late harvesting of maize, leading to overall 4-6% increase in total grain yield of the wheat-maize system. Increased use of farming machines and minimum tillage technology also shortened the time for field preparation from harvest time of summer maize to sowing time of winter wheat, which facilitated the later harvest of summer maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatio-temporal variations in precipitation are affecting agricultural production in China in the context of climate change. Based on daily precipitation data from 63 national meteorological stations on the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain from 1963 to 2012, this paper analysed the spatio-temporal variations in precipitation in terms of precipitation days and intensity, using spatial interpolation, linear trend estimation and wavelet analysis. The results indicated that: (i) from 1963 to 2012, the number of annual precipitation days and intensity decreased gradually from the southeast to the northwest. Additionally, the distribution of the extreme precipitation index was similar to that of the annual precipitation index; (ii) the number of annual precipitation days and heavy precipitation days gradually decreased, while precipitation intensity and extreme precipitation days and extreme rainfall intensity remained relatively stable or decreased. The spatial patterns of annual variation trends were considerably different. The annual precipitation days and intensity trends are consistent with the overall trend, while that of the extreme rainfall index in some regions differs from the overall trend; (iii) the precipitation index displayed different periodic oscillations during the period, and the precipitation index values differed at different time scales. However, all the precipitation index values exhibited a 28-yr oscillation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]