The Use and Abuse of Climate Scenarios in Agriculture

Abstract

It is not clear how to apply the climate scenario to assess the impact of climate change in the agricultural sector. Even if you apply the same scenario, the result can vary depending on the temporal-spatial downscaling, the post-treatment to adjust the bias of a model, and the prediction model selection (used for an impact assessment). The end user, who uses the scenario climate data, should select climate factors, a spatial extend, and a temporal range appropriate for the objectives of an analysis. It is important to draw the impact assessment results with minimum uncertainty by evaluating the suitability of the data including the reproducibility of the past climate and calculating the optimum future climate change scenario. This study introduced data processing methods for reducing the uncertainties in the process of applying the future climate change scenario to users in the agricultural sector and tried to provide basic information for appropriately using the scenario data in accordance with the study objectives.