The Agro-Climatic Change Characteristics across China during the Latest Decades

Climate change has been highlighted over the last decades worldwide, with pronounced higher warming trends for China. Induced by climate change, to some extent, agricultural production has changed, as well as the climatic resources during the agricultural growing season. An obvious longer potential agricultural growing season (PAGS) was detected in the latest decades from 1961–2020. The spatial–temporal characteristics of change and variation of climatic resources during the PAGS were explored, utilizing comparisons of the differences in mean magnitude, standard deviation, and trends. In the period of 1991–2020 relative to 1961–1990, alterations in PAGS were characterized by increases of 0–1.5 °C in mean air temperature overall, 0.8–23.8% increases in precipitation in the southeast, northeast, and west, as well as a decrease of 2.1–10.2% in insolation in central-south regions but an increase of 0.3–6.7% in the north and west. The features were pronounced during the PAGS in the primary agricultural zones as follows: (1) Northeast China, increasing and stable temperature but unstable precipitation and insolation; (2) North, eastern-west, and Southwest China, increasing but unstable temperature, decreasing but stable precipitation as well as decreasing and unstable insolation; (3) Southeast China, increasing but unstable temperature and precipitation as well as decreasing and unstable insolation; (4) West China, increasing but unstable temperature and precipitation as well as increasing but unstable insolation. Further comparisons between agro-climatic change and climate change indicated that temperature alterations during the PAGS were less numerous while precipitation and insolation were more unstable than the changes during the whole year. These findings can assist the understanding of regional agricultural climate changes and guide agricultural production practices in response.