Climate change has been highlighted over the last decades worldwide, with pronounced higher warming trends for China. Induced by climate change, to some extent, agricultural production has changed, as well as the climatic resources during the agricultural growing season. An obvious longer potential agricultural growing season (PAGS) was detected in the latest decades from 1961–2020. The spatial–temporal characteristics of change and variation of climatic resources during the PAGS were explored, utilizing comparisons of the differences in mean magnitude, standard deviation, and trends. In the period of 1991–2020 relative to 1961–1990, alterations in PAGS were characterized by increases of 0–1.5 °C in mean air temperature overall, 0.8–23.8% increases in precipitation in the southeast, northeast, and west, as well as a decrease of 2.1–10.2% in insolation in central-south regions but an increase of 0.3–6.7% in the north and west. The features were pronounced during the PAGS in the primary agricultural zones as follows: (1) Northeast China, increasing and stable temperature but unstable precipitation and insolation; (2) North, eastern-west, and Southwest China, increasing but unstable temperature, decreasing but stable precipitation as well as decreasing and unstable insolation; (3) Southeast China, increasing but unstable temperature and precipitation as well as decreasing and unstable insolation; (4) West China, increasing but unstable temperature and precipitation as well as increasing but unstable insolation. Further comparisons between agro-climatic change and climate change indicated that temperature alterations during the PAGS were less numerous while precipitation and insolation were more unstable than the changes during the whole year. These findings can assist the understanding of regional agricultural climate changes and guide agricultural production practices in response.

The accurate and sub-daily identification of agricultural low-temperature disasters (LTDs) facilitates the understanding of their dynamic evolution, the evaluation of the characteristics of disaster events, and informs effective strategies aimed at disaster prevention and mitigation. In order to ensure the timely, precise, and comprehensive capture of disaster processes, we have developed a dynamic evaluation framework for winter wheat spring LTD in the Huang-Huai-Hai (HHH) region, driven by meteorological data. This framework consists of two primary components: a disaster classification module and a dynamic simulation-assessment module. Through disaster mechanisms and comprehensive statistical analysis, we have established the input features and structural framework of the classification module using a decision tree algorithm. The dynamic simulation evaluation module is based on our newly developed index for the cumulative hourly intensity of low-temperature stress (CHI) and its grade indicators. This index integrates the interaction between cold stress (low-temperature intensity, cooling amplitude, and duration) and mitigating conditions (air humidity) during the evolution process of LTD. Based on CHI, we found that as the intensity of low temperatures and the amplitude of cooling rise, along with an extended duration of stress and a reduction in relative humidity, the severity of spring LTDs in winter wheat get worse. The overall validation accuracy of the evaluation framework is 92.6%. High validation accuracy indicates that our newly established framework demonstrates significant efficacy in identifying LTDs and assessing grade. Through the analysis of the characteristics of the disaster process, spring LTDs affecting winter wheat are mainly mild, with frost identified as the primary category of LTD. The duration of freeze injury typically exceeds 24 h, while the duration of frost damage and cold damage is less than 24 h. From 1980 to 2022 in the HHH region, the frequency of spring freeze injury and frost damage on winter wheat showed an overall decreasing trend, with a particularly significant decrease in frost damage occurrences. Conversely, cold damage occurrences are on the rise. In addition, the duration of individual disaster events for the three categories of spring LTDs is decreasing, while both the average intensity and extremity of these events show increasing trends. This study has important practical value for the sub-daily scale evaluation of the spring LTD affecting winter wheat in the HHH region and serves as an effective guide for agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation, as well as for the formulation of planting strategies.