The study was led by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research with contributions from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Rice is a staple food for more than half of the world’s population, but estimates of how climate change will affect production vary widely. In the new study, results from 214 observed experiments show that extreme heat (exposure to temperatures above 30°C) is the dominant factor behind rice yield losses from warming. At more than 70 percent of observed sites, high-temperature exposure accounted for more than half of absolute yield change. However, when compared to seven crop models, the models were shown to be less sensitive to heat extremes than the real-world observations.