A number of modeling studies have postulated a decline trend of rice yields with higher temperature associated with climate change.However, the result was entirely dependent upon crop model, which relied on various simplified and untested assumptions.Thus, an ex-post study using extensive long-term (1981-2005) rice yields and climate data on three spatial scales (i.e.experimental station, county and province) was conducted on lowland rice in China.At most stations, yields were positively correlated to temperature and there was no significant negative correlation between them.Therefore, our empirical results argue against the often-cited hypothesis of lower yields with higher temperature.