final_program_abstracts[1]

11 IMSC Session Program
Evaluating the skill in predicting crop yield using an ensemble
climate forecast by a regional climate model
Wednesday - Poster Session 11
Theodoros Mavromatis and Ioannis Pytharoulis
Department of Meteorology – Climatology, School of Geology, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece
Advances in climate prediction, at multi-week lead-time, offer the potential: i.- to
reduce human vulnerability to agricultural impacts of climate variability, through
improved agricultural decision making, and ii.- either prepare for expected adverse
conditions, or take advantage of expected favourable ones. The main objective of this
study is to assess the value of multi-week forecasts, with increasing spatial resolution
on the lead-time, for successful prediction of simulated wheat, in the Mediterranean
basin and mainly in Greece. Nine ensemble members are developed using the WRF-
ARW regional atmospheric numerical model, at two different horizontal resolutions
(from about 50km x 50km to almost 15km x 15km). The WRF model is applied, at
forecast mode, every June for the years 2000-2009. To assess the value of the
forecasts, two sets of site-specific daily weather scenarios (of incoming solar
radiation, maximum and minimum air temperature and precipitation) are compared
with one, based on the existing historical climatic data. The daily weather scenarios
are created with a stochastic weather generator and correspond to the abovementioned
two different horizontal resolutions. The CERES-Wheat crop model is used to
simulate distributions of wheat yield at selected locations.
Abstracts 226