The Implication of Irrigation in Climate Change Impact Assessment at a Pan-European Scale.

Irrigation is a key component for farming profit and food security in arid and semi-arid lands. Climate change may lead to extremer weather conditions and shifting precipitation patterns and affect the crop yield and water consuming. This paper aims to study the role of irrigation in modelling of climate change impacts at a pan-European scale and the impact of climate change on irrigation water demand (IWD).  Maps irrigation were created for six crops, i.e. winter wheat, winter barley, rape seed, grain maize, potato and sugar beet. We simulated yields and IWD under historical climate condition (1982–2006) and three future (2040–2064) climate change scenarios (B1, B2 and A1B), using a process-based crop model of SIMPLACE <LINTUL5>. We found that the including irrigation in the simulation made negligible difference for winter crops with respect to the yield change between baseline and climate change scenarios, but obvious differences for spring crops across currently irrigated areas. The irrigation moderated the negative impacts of climate change. The IWD decreased for winter crops in the northern areas, but increased in the southern areas. The IWD for spring crops increased for the majority of Europe, especially for regions currently already with irrigation practices. We conclude that including the irrigation in the simulations is essential for climate change impact assessment of highly irrigated crops. To sustain or increase the crop yield under climate change more irrigation water is needed for the currently irrigated crops, especially in the dry southern regions of Europe.