In a recent article in Nature Communications, CSDE Affiliate Jade d’Alpoim Guedes (Anthropology) assessed how warm temperatures have constrained rice’s distribution and the adaptive strategies used to sustain its production. d’Alpoim Guedes and co-authors drew on contemporary records of rice cultivation, archaeological data spanning rice’s long-term history of cultivation, and temperature projections for the past and future. The thermal limits of rice cultivation have remained consistent throughout rice’s domestication history despite its genetic diversification and geographic expansion. Over the past 9000 years, domesticated Asian rice has rarely thrived where mean annual temperature exceeds 28 °C or warm-season maximum temperature exceeds 33 °C. By the end of this century, projections estimate that the land area exceeding these thermal thresholds could expand by ten to thirty times in Asia’s major rice-producing nations. Rice-dependent regions face unprecedented challenges in maintaining this staple crop under projected warming.