Repurposing climate reconstructions for drought prediction in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Climate information may help smallholder farmers in Southeast Asia take informed risks and reduce their climate vulnerability. Model-based seasonal forecasts are limited in the skill they offer with longer lead times, and in their accessibility to farmers in remote regions. Climate reconstructions derived from tree rings can complement model-based forecasts, providing probabilistic estimates of future climate at an annual resolution. This study demonstrates the skill of PDSI reconstructions derived from the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA) to forecast a climate signal several years into the future, and illustrates the advantage of such information vis-à-vis the simple strategy of assuming climate to persist from year to year. This work shows the potential for such climate reconstructions to improve inter-annual decisions on Southeast Asian farms, and highlights the social research necessary to transmute this potential into a valuable climate decision aid.In much of Southeast Asia the capacity of smallholder farmers to predict and protect against drought is limited. Farmers commonly employ conservative, riskaverse strategies to farm planning and operation that reduce losses to climate-related damages, but that also reduce surpluses in years of favorable climate (Meinke and Stone 2005). Farmers operating close to thresholds of sustenance and self-sufficiency who fail to take advantage of these rents can fall into 'poverty traps' (Holling 2001;Sachs 2005), unable to lift themselves from degraded land conditions and a lack of capital. To help smallholders become informed risk takers and capitalize on the Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (

Proxy evidence for China's monsoon precipitation response to volcanic aerosols over the past seven centuries

“…The index is available in 2.5°regular grids for the area between 8.75°S-56.25°N and 61.25°E-143.75°E, which provides a well-dated long-running spatial-temporal hydrological index in Asian monsoon areas. After well-calibrated and validated reconstruction, Cook et al [2010] found similar patterns between the reconstructed drought fields and four well-documented historical drought, which further validate the accuracy of the data, and since its release it has been used to study the hydrological consequences of volcanic eruptions , mechanisms of monsoon variation [Ummenhofer et al, 2013], and to predict patterns in monsoon variation [Wahl and Morrill, 2010] and future climate shifts over time [Bell et al, 2011].…”

“…After well‐calibrated and validated reconstruction, Cook et al . [] found similar patterns between the reconstructed drought fields and four well‐documented historical drought, which further validate the accuracy of the data, and since its release it has been used to study the hydrological consequences of volcanic eruptions [ Anchukaitis et al ., ], mechanisms of monsoon variation [ Ummenhofer et al ., ], and to predict patterns in monsoon variation [ Wahl and Morrill , ] and future climate shifts over time [ Bell et al ., ].…”

Public Perceptions and Willingness to Pay for Renewable Energy: A Case Study from Greece

“…Over the same period, carbon dioxide emissions (hereinafter CO 2 ) have doubled. Climate change poses a significant environmental, social, and economic threat [6]. The increase in anthropogenic carbon emissions is linked to global warming.…”

Palaeoclimatological perspective on river basin hydrometeorology: case of the Mekong Basin

“…To date, the MADA has been applied and investigated in just a few studies (e.g. Bell et al, 2011;Anchukaitis et al, 2010;Fang et al, 2013;Ummenhofer et al, 2013), but none of these have used MADA on a river basin scale, linked it to discharge variability or examined in detail how well it can be used for the investigation of hydrometeorological variability induced by phenomena such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).…”

“…A major benefit of the PDSI in long-term climate and hydrometeorological analyses is that it is based on meteorological factors and thus reflects only the variations in climate, excluding the potential influences of land use changes, dam construction, and irrigation, which may be contained, for example, in discharge data. In general, MADA provides an important means for understanding climate in Monsoon Asia and it has already proven to be useful for this purpose (Wahl and Morrill, 2010;Bell et al, 2011). The MADA dataset was obtained from NOAA's palaeoclimatology online database (NOAA, 2010).…”