1. Multi-annual prediction of drought and heat stress to support decision making in the wheat sector
- Author
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Andrea Toreti, Louis-Philippe Caron, Nube Gonzalez-Reviriego, Andrej Ceglar, Pierre-Antoine Bretonnière, Margarita Samsó Cabré, Balakrishnan Solaraju-Murali, Matteo Zampieri, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Doctorat en Enginyeria Ambiental, and Barcelona Supercomputing Center
- Subjects
0301 basic medicine ,Atmospheric Science ,Index (economics) ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Time horizon ,Context (language use) ,01 natural sciences ,03 medical and health sciences ,Meteorology. Climatology ,Evapotranspiration ,Blat ,Environmental Chemistry ,GE1-350 ,Precipitation ,Drought forecasting ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,2. Zero hunger ,Global and Planetary Change ,Food security ,Global warming ,Desenvolupament humà i sostenible::Enginyeria ambiental [Àrees temàtiques de la UPC] ,Environmental sciences ,030104 developmental biology ,Climate change mitigation ,13. Climate action ,Climatology ,Wheat ,Environmental science ,QC851-999 ,Sequeres -- Previsió - Abstract
Drought and heat stress affect global wheat production and food security. Since these climate hazards are expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to anthropogenic climate change, there is a growing need for effective planning and adaptive actions at all timescales relevant to the stakeholders and users in this sector. This work aims at assessing the forecast quality in predicting the evolution of drought and heat stress by using user-relevant agro-climatic indices such as Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) and Heat Magnitude Day Index (HMDI) on a multi-annual timescale, as this time horizon coincides with the long-term strategic planning of stakeholders in the wheat sector. We present the probabilistic skill and reliability of initialized decadal forecast to predict these indices for the months preceding the wheat harvest on a global spatial scale. The results reveal the usefulness of the study in a climate services context while showing that decadal climate forecasts are skillful and reliable over several wheat harvesting regions. We would like to acknowledge financial support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (MED-GOLD; Grant No. 776467, EUCP; Grant No. 776613 and FOCUS-Africa; Grant No. 869575) and from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) as part of the project CLINSA (Grant No. CGL2017-85791-R). This study has also received support from C3S_34c (contract number: ECMWF/COPERNICUS/2019/C3S_34c_DWD) of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) operated by ECMWF. B.S.M. acknowledges additional financial support from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellowship (Grant No. 713673) and from a fellowship of ’la Caixa’ Foundation (ID 100010434). The fellowship code is LCF/BQ/IN17/11620038.
- Published
- 2023