Shifting climatic sensitivities of drought-related yield gaps signal potential increases in irrigation reliance in the Yellow River Basin
2026
Linchao Li | Zhongshan Xu | Yajie Zhang | Ning Yao | Yi Li | Qiang Yu | Hao Feng | Guijun Yang | Qinsi He
Climate change is intensifying drought risk and threatening food production, yet how drought-driven yield losses evolve with warming remains poorly quantified. Here, we combine an ensemble of nine crop models with 38 global climate models to quantify shifting sensitivities of the irrigated–rainfed yield gap to key climate drivers across the Yellow River Basin under SSP126, SSP245, and SSP585. We find that yield gaps increase for maize, soybean, and rice under future climates, while wheat exhibits a slight decrease. The precipitation is negatively associated with the yield gap, but this negative effect weakens (shifts toward zero) across large areas of the basin. For maize, 69.8 %, 66.7 %, and 77.8 % of grid cells show increasing sensitivity under SSP126, SSP245, and SSP585, respectively. This indicates rainfall is becoming less effective at narrowing the gap as atmospheric demand rises, implying greater reliance on irrigation. Evapotranspiration (ET) generally shows the opposite spatial pattern, except in some extremely arid upstream areas where ET-yield gap coupling weakens or even decouples due to high atmospheric demand. Yield gap sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 is negative in most regions, consistent with improved water-use efficiency that reduces the yield gap; this effect is more pronounced in the arid upstream. By identifying spatiotemporal hotspots of intensifying yield-gap sensitivities, this study informs targeted irrigation investment and drought-time water-allocation prioritization, supporting climate-smart water management to stabilize production and long-term sustainability.
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