Local climate change projections
We design tools to simulate expected changes in future climate and assess how they may affect us through risk and vulnerability analysis.
About the project
AGROecología para la lucha contra el cambio CLIMático y la variabilidad EXtrema or AGROCLIMEX is a study funded by the call for research projects for non-profit foundations granted by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge during the year 2022.
Objectives
AGROCLIMEX aims to:
- Analyze the possibility of generating early warnings through the integration of extreme weather forecasts and future climate characterization.
- Define climate risk thresholds designed on the basis of indicators specifically defined for each of the selected case studies. Local climate projections generated using a two-step statistical downscaling methodology developed by the FIC (Ribalaygua et al., 2013) applied to climate models belonging to the sixth IPCC report are used for this purpose.
Results
Among its main results, the following stand out:
- An increase in the risk of water stress is expected. Although the changes in annual precipitation are not particularly significant, the increase in temperatures will mean an increase in evapotranspiration that should be analyzed in terms of water balance considering the limitations of access to water resources, local soil conditions and the needs of each species and specific variety.
- A significant reduction in the risk of frost damage to flowering and fruit set is expected, especially relevant in the long term.
- These results reinforce the need to work at a local scale considering the orographic and climatic characteristics of each region. Likewise, it is necessary to evaluate locally how the expected climatic changes affect the crop in each locality.
- It is necessary to work with the most recent meteorological information, in this case the CMIP6 models. On the one hand, each new version of climate models introduces improvements in the parameterization and simulation of the climate system and the interaction between its components, resulting in a better climate simulation and therefore reducing the uncertainties introduced. On the other hand, the need to work in line with the latest scenarios proposed by the IPCC, the SSPs, which are the most current way of evaluating the different emission scenarios.
Funded by
Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge through grants to third-sector entities or non-governmental organizations that carry out activities of general interest considered to be of social interest in the field of scientific and technical research and environmental protection under state jurisdiction. This research has been funded by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge but does not express its opinion.
