AgMIP Climate Datasets and Scenarios.

AgMIP’s transdisciplinary approach is allowing increased cooperation between the climate, agronomic, and economic communities, leading to the co-development of new datasets and methodologies to better understand the agricultural impacts of climate change.  This presentation will describe the activities of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Climate Team using a series of applied examples to illustrate the agroclimatic analysis of historical and future time periods. 

AgMIP has created two historical climate datasets (AgMERRA and AgCFSR) based upon a combination of daily outputs from retrospective analyses (“reanalyses”), gridded temperature and precipitation station observations, and satellite information for solar radiation and rainfall.  These datasets are useful for gap-filling and quality control of incomplete observational datasets used in model calibration, are designed for agricultural applications including global gridded crop modeling, and form the basis of statistically-downscaled climate scenarios for future periods.  AgMIP future climate scenarios are based upon the suite of climate models produced for the Fifth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), with daily output from 20 global climate models (GCMs) providing information on regional climate changes across a range of time periods and greenhouse gas concentration scenarios.  AgMIP assessments first examine the effects of changes in mean monthly climate, then incorporate shifts in the distribution of rainfall as well as the frequency of extreme temperatures.  The AgMIP Climate Team is also developing new approaches to emulate climate impacts based upon primary crop responses to carbon dioxide, temperature, and water changes on a given cropping system.