Comparison of projected rice blast epidemics in the Korean Peninsula between the CMIP5 and CMIP6 scenarios

Abstract

Recently, the International Panel for Climate Change released the 6th Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) climate change scenarios with shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). The SSP scenarios result in significant changes to climate variables in climate projections compared to their predecessor, the representative concentration pathways from the CMIP5. Therefore, it is necessary to examine whether the CMIP6 scenarios differentially impact plant-disease ecosystems compared to the CMIP5 scenarios. In this study, we used the EPIRICE-LB model to simulate and compare projected rice blast disease epidemics in the Korean Peninsula using five selected family global climate models (GCMs) of the CMIP5 and CMIP6 for two forcing scenarios. We found a similar decrease in rice blast epidemics in both CMIP scenarios; however, this decrease was greater in the CMIP6 scenarios. In addition, distinctive epidemic trends were found in North Korea, where the rice blast epidemics increase until the mid-2040s but decrease thereafter until 2100, with different spatial patterns of varying magnitudes. Controlling devastating rice blast diseases will remain important during the next decades in North Korea, where appropriate chemical controls are unavailable due to chronic economic and political issues. Overall, our analyses using the new CMIP6 scenarios reemphasized the importance of developing effective control measures against rice blast for specific high-risk areas and the need for a universal impact and vulnerability assessment platform for plant-disease ecosystems that can be used with new climate change scenarios in the future.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10584-022-03410-2.

Keywords: Disease epidemic; Plant–disease ecosystem; Representative concentration pathway; Rice blast; Shared socioeconomic pathway.

Fig. 1

Risk maps of the average rice blast epidemics by administrative area in the Korean Peninsula for the historical period (1981–2010), simulated by EPIRICE-LB using a weather observations from 87 stations and the simulated weather data from five family GCMs of the b CMIP5 and d CMIP6. Relative errors (REs) between the epidemic scores from the observed and the simulated weather data for the c CMIP5 and e CMIP6 models were also calculated

Fig. 2

Projected changes in rice blast epidemics under RCP4.5 scenario for both CMIP5 and CMIP6 in North and South Korea. a Time series of the projected rice blast epidemics under RCP4.5 for the five family GCMs of CMIP5 and CMIP6. Thick lines show the median of all CMIP5 (red) and CMIP6 (blue) GCMs; shaded areas represent ± one standard deviation around the median. b Percent changes in rice blast epidemic risks under the RCP4.5 scenario calculated using the multi-model ensembles of the CMIP5 and CMIP6. The percent change is relative to the historical period for the very near future (2011–2040), near future (2041–2070), and distant future (2071–2100) periods for both CMIP5 and CMIP6 scenarios

Fig. 3

Same as Fig. 2, except the RCP8.5 scenarios were used instead

Fig. 4

Distribution of the projected changes in rice blast risks and average temperature (Temp, °C), total precipitation (Prcp, mm), and average relative humidity (Rhum, %) during the EPIRICE-LB simulation periods for the CMIP5 and CMIP6 ensembles under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 during the near future period (2041–2070). Colored boxes show the 25th to 75th percentile of the distribution, and the thick lines inside the boxes show the median. Whiskers extend to the maximum value within 1.5 times the interquartile range beyond the 25th and 75th percentile, respectively. Outliers, i.e., values outside this range, are not shown