Assessment of crop yield in China simulated by 13 global gridded crop models

China is the major agricultural producing country in the world and feeds around 20% of the world population. However, few studies have assessed the crop yield in China simulated by current global crop models, which leave large uncertainties for evaluation of crop productions under future climate change. Here, we perform a systematic evaluation of China’s crop yield simulations made by CLM5-crop and 12 models from the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI) phase I. This is done by comparing simulations of maize, rice, wheat, and soybean yield during 1980-2009 with national yield statistics. Our results show that most GGCMI models overestimate China’s maize and soybean yields, but underestimate rice yield, and fail to simulate the upward trends of the yield for the four crop types. CLM5-Crop generally reproduces the country total yields of maize, rice, and wheat well and can capture the observed significant upward trends in those three crops, although fails to reproduce the magnitude of these trends and the significant upward trend in soybean yield. Most models can simulate the interannual variability of maize yield skillfully, while work poorly for other crop types except CGMS-WOFOST and PEPC for rice, pAPSIM and CGMS-WOFOST for wheat and GEPIC for soybean. In addition, most models struggle to simulate the spatial pattern of crop yield.