Does decadal climate variation influence wheat and maize production in the southeast USA?

• Over one hundred years of historical winter and summer crop production were simulated.
• Wavelet analysis showed winter wheat production was dominated by decadal oscillations.
• Wavelet analysis did not show significant decadal variations in summer maize production.
• Variations of winter wheat yields were driven by winter temperature and spring precipitation.
• Variations of winter wheat yields showed strong linkages with the AMO, PDO, and NAO.

Linking decadal variability with short-term variability could be potentially exploited for improving seasonal climate forecasting for assisting crop management decisions. The objective of this study was to explore whether there are decadal variations in wheat (winter crop) and maize (summer crop) production and whether these decadal variations correlate with any known variations of climate. Over one hundred years of wheat and maize yields were simulated using process-based crop models with dynamically downscaled daily reanalysis data over four locations in the southeast USA. Using wavelet and cross-wavelet analysis, we found that winter crop yields were dominated by 10- and 22-year decadal oscillations; the decadal variations of winter crop yields were driven by decadal variations of winter temperature and spring precipitation; no decadal variations were detected for summer crop yields and summer precipitation and temperature. Cross-wavelet analysis showed that the decadal variations of winter crop yields were correlated with indices of the annual Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), the annual Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Therefore, this knowledge of decadal climate variability could potentially be leveraged to predict winter seasonal yields of crops.