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The contribution of solar brightening to the US maize yield trend

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 275–278 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Predictions of crop yield under future climate change are predicated on historical yield trends1,2,3, hence it is important to identify the contributors to historical yield gains and their potential for continued increase. The large gains in maize yield in the US Corn Belt have been attributed to agricultural technologies4, ignoring the potential contribution of solar brightening (decadal-scale increases in incident solar radiation) reported for much of the globe since the mid-1980s. In this study, using a novel biophysical/empirical approach, we show that solar brightening contributed approximately 27% of the US Corn Belt yield trend from 1984 to 2013. Accumulated solar brightening during the post-flowering phase of development of maize increased during the past three decades, causing the yield increase that previously had been attributed to agricultural technology. Several factors are believed to cause solar brightening, but their relative importance and future outlook are unknown5,6,7,8,9, making prediction of continued solar brightening and its future contribution to yield gain uncertain. Consequently, results of this study call into question the implicit use of historical yield trends in predicting yields under future climate change scenarios.

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Figure 1: Accumulated solar brightening during the grain-filling phase of maize across ten US Corn Belt states between 1984 and 2013.
Figure 2: Increase in county yields between to 1984 and 2013 that is attributable to solar brightening across ten US Corn Belt states (counties with >10,000 A of harvested grain corn).

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all our colleagues participating in the AgMIP Maize Model Improvement group who contributed to the quantification of maize phenology that inspired the current study. Special thanks to W.B. Leeds (The Climate Corp, USA) for filtering and interpolating public weather data sets (POWER and GHCN data sets) for use in the current study.

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Author notes

  1. Matthijs Tollenaar and Saratha Kumudini: Unaffiliated: mtollena@uoguelph.ca (M.T.); saratha.kumudini@gmail.com (S.K.).

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Advanced Agrilytics, Huntington, Indiana 46750, USA

    Jon Fridgen

  2. Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA

    Priyanka Tyagi

  3. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia 20546, USA

    Paul W. Stackhouse Jr

  4. Saratha Kumudini

Authors
  1. Matthijs Tollenaar
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  4. Paul W. Stackhouse Jr
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  5. Saratha Kumudini
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Contributions

S.K. conceived this study, M.T. developed the quantitative framework to estimate yield from solar brightening, and both drafted the manuscript. J.F. designed the statistical analyses. P.T. analysed the data. P.W.S. contributed to the quantification of solar brightening in the US Midwest. All contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Saratha Kumudini.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Tollenaar, M., Fridgen, J., Tyagi, P. et al. The contribution of solar brightening to the US maize yield trend. Nature Clim Change 7, 275–278 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3234

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