Land-atmosphere coupling exacerbates the moisture-associated heterogeneous impacts of compound extreme events on maize yield in China

Compound climate events are major threats to crop production under climate change. However, the heterogeneity in the impact of compound events on crop yield and its drivers remain poorly understood. Herein, we used empirical approach to evaluate the impact of compound hot–dry and cold–wet events on maize yield in China at the county level from 1990 to 2016, with a special focus on the spatial heterogeneity. Our findings indicate comparable impact of extremely compound cold–wet events (−12.8% ± 3.6%) on maize yield loss to extremely compound hot–dry events (−11.3% ± 2.1%). The spatial pattern of compound hot–dry and cold–wet events impacts on maize yield was dominantly associated with moisture regime, followed by management practices and soil properties. Specifically, drier counties and counties with less fraction of clay soil and organic carbon tend to experience greater yield loss due to compound hot–dry events, and wet condition, excessive fertilizer, clay soil and rich organic carbon aggravate the maize yield loss due to compound cold–wet events. Moreover, the land–atmosphere coupling exacerbated the heterogeneous yield impact through divergent heat transfer. In drier regions, the greater proportion of sensible heat creates a positive feedback between drier land and hotter atmosphere. In contrast, the greater proportion of latent heat in wetter regions results in a positive feedback between wetter land and colder atmosphere. Our results highlighted a critical element to explore in further studies focused on the land-atmosphere coupling in agricultural risk under climate change.