Assessing the impact of climate variations on wheat yield in north- west India using GIS P. K. Kingra 1 • Raj Setia 2 • Jatinder Kaur 1 • Simranjeet Singh 2 • Som Pal Singh 1 • S. S. Kukal 1 • B. Pateriya 2 Received: 7 October 2017 / Revised: 31 January 2018 / Accepted: 31 January 2018 Ó Korean Spatial Information Society 2018 Abstract We analyzed the spatial and temporal variations (40 years from 1974–75 to 2013–14 with an interval of four decades) in wheat yield as influenced by the three important potential determinants (climate, fertilizers and irrigation) in the three regions (North-west, Central and South-west) of Indian Punjab. Wheat productivity in Pun- jab has increased linearly at 60–64 kg ha -1 year -1 . Although linear increase in productivity can be attributed to technological developments but large year-to-year oscillations depicted the effects of climatic variations. Mann–Kendall and Sen’s slope estimator statistical tests indicated that majority of the trends in maximum temper- ature and rainfall in different regions were not significant, but there was a significant increase in minimum tempera- ture at 0.053 °C year -1 in north-east, at 0.047 °C year -1 in central and 0.044 °C year -1 in south-west regions of Punjab. Step-wise regression was used to assess the relative influence of three determinants (climate, fertilizer and irrigation) on yield. Minimum temperature explained 44% of variability in yield. Out of the remaining 56% vari- ability, 44% variability in wheat yield was explained by irrigation availability and 7% by fertilizer application. The spatial interpolation showed the decade-wise shift in area towards higher productivity, higher temperature and lower rainfall during the wheat growing season. Keywords Climate Á GIS Á Non-parametric statistical test Á Spatial interpolation Á Wheat 1 Introduction Wheat, an important cereal crop, is the staple food for billions of people. Climate change and global warming scenarios are adversely affecting wheat productivity in different regions of the world. Wheat requires cool climate during its early growth stages for expressing potential productivity. Higher temperature during the early growth period is unfavorable for tillering, while during later growth stages, it reduces the duration of grain formation and hinders proper grain filling. A rise of global surface temperature within the range of 0.4–2.6 °C by 2046–2065 and 0.3–4.8 °C by 2081–2100 relative to the reference period of 1986–2005 has been predicted [1]. In the Indo- Gangetic plains, the average temperature is predicted to increase by 0.5–1.0 °C during mid twenty-first century, by 3.5–4.5 °C rise towards the end of the twenty-first century and anticipates an increased frequency of extremely wet rainy seasons [2]. An increase in atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide concentration, and altered precipitation under climate change are likely to have adverse impacts on agricultural productivity. Despite ongoing improvements in technology and crop varieties, weather and climate are still the main uncontrollable factors affecting agricultural pro- duction [3]. Changing temporal and spatial trends of hydro- climatic variables, rising sea levels and increasing inci- dence of extreme events pose new risks to future food insecurity over all parts of the globe [4, 5]. Anomalies in temperature and climatic regime of our earth system have raised the concerns that global climate change is a strong stressor for agriculture and world food production, as Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-018-0174-2) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. & Raj Setia setiark@gmail.com 1 School of Climate Change and Agricultural Meteorology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India 2 Punjab Remote Sensing Centre, Ludhiana, Punjab, India 123 Spat. Inf. Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41324-018-0174-2