Impact of Climate Variability on Maize Yield Under Different Climate Change Scenarios in Southern India: A Panel Data Approach

The changes in frequency and intensity of rainfall, variation in temperature, increasing extreme weather events, and rising greenhouse gas emissions can together have a varying impact on food grain production, which then leads to significant impacts on food security in the future. The purpose of this study is to quantify how maize productivity might be affected due to climate change in Southern India. The present study examines how the projected changes to the northeast monsoon will affect maize yield in Tamil Nadu during the rabi season, which spans from September to December, by using a three-step methodology. Firstly, global climate models that accurately represent the large-scale features of the mean monsoon were chosen. Secondly, baseline and future climate data were extracted from the selected global models and the baseline data were compared with observations. Thirdly, the panel data regression model was fitted with the India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) observed climate data to generate the baseline coefficients and projected the maize production using future climate data generated from the global climate model. The Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 were used from two global climate model outputs, namely GFDL_CM3 and HadGEM2_CC, to predict the climate change variability on maize yields during the middle (2021–2050) and the end (2071–2100) of this century. The maize yield is predicted to increase by 3 to 5.47 per cent during the mid-century period and it varies from 7.25 to 14.53 per cent during the end of the century for the medium- (RCP4.5) and high-emission (RCP8.5) climate change scenarios. The maize grain yield increasing during the future periods indicated that the increase in rainfall and temperature during winter in Southern India reduced the possibility of a negative impact of temperature on the maize yield.