Compound climatic extreme events amplify food insecurity

The increasing co-occurrence of climatic hazards poses growing risks to crop production, yet their implications for rice supply and self-sufficiency remain insufficiently quantified. Here, we combine a vine-copula framework with calibrated ORYZA (v3) model to characterize nonlinear dependencies among climate indicators, estimate the probability of compound climatic events, and assess their impacts on rice yield potential, yield gaps, and national self-sufficiency across major rice-growing regions of China. We show that (1) intensification of the global water cycle increases the frequency of extreme heat from 25 to 50% in the late 20th century to over 90% by 2050, while the risk of compound events involving extreme heat, rainfall and/or solar radiation is projected to change by approximately 3–50% in single-rice systems and 1–60% in double-rice systems relative to 1981–2017; (2) increasing probability of compound climatic extreme events apparently affect potential production for single rice (−2.8 to 0.2 t ha −1 ) and double-rice growing systems (−1.3 to 0.8 t ha −1 ), with downside risk increasing progressively over time; (3) the negative impacts on rice yield potential outweigh the benefits (0.5 to 1.5 t ha −1 ) gained from increased atmospheric CO 2 , leading to reduction in yield gaps. Assuming production remains near 70% of yield potential, projected national rice supply in 2030–2050 (∼216 Mt. with CO 2 effects; ∼195 Mt. without) may fall below projected demand (∼220 Mt), implying increasing pressure on China's rice self-sufficiency. Our results highlight the need for targeted adaptation and resilience investment, particularly in single-cropping regions, under intensifying compound climate risk.