Development of Crop Yield Estimation Method by Applying Seasonal Climate Prediction in Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract:

Under the influence of recent climate change, abnormal weather condition such as floods and droughts has issued frequently all over the world. The occurrence of abnormal weather in major crop production areas leads to soaring world grain prices because it influence the reduction of crop yield. Development of crop yield estimation method is important means to accommodate the global food crisis caused by abnormal weather. However, due to problems with the reliability of the seasonal climate prediction, application research on agricultural productivity has not been much progress yet. In this study, it is an object to develop long-term crop yield estimation method in major crop production countries worldwide using multi seasonal climate prediction data collected by APEC Climate Center. There are 6-month lead seasonal predictions produced by six state-of-the-art global coupled ocean-atmosphere models(MSC_CANCM3, MSC_CANCM4, NASA, NCEP, PNU, POAMA). First of all, we produce a customized climate data through temporal and spatial downscaling methods for use as a climatic input data to the global scale crop model. Next, we evaluate the uncertainty of climate prediction by applying multi seasonal climate prediction in the crop model. Because rice is the most important staple food crop in the Asia-Pacific region, we assess the reliability of the rice yields using seasonal climate prediction for main rice production countries. RMSE(Root Mean Squire Error) and TCC(Temporal Correlation Coefficient) analysis is performed in Asia-Pacific countries, major 14 rice production countries, to evaluate the reliability of the rice yield according to the climate prediction models. We compare the rice yield data obtained from FAOSTAT and estimated using the seasonal climate prediction data in Asia-Pacific countries. In addition, we show that the reliability of seasonal climate prediction according to the climate models in Asia-Pacific countries where rice cultivation is being carried out.