ARS | Publication request: The ICARDA agro-climate tool

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: November 7, 2008
Publication Date: November 10, 2008
Citation: Mauget, S.A., De Pauw, E. 2008. The ICARDA agro-climate tool. International Conference on Development of Drylands. Alexandria, Egypt. November 7-10, 2008.

Interpretive Summary: The mandate area of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) extends from northwest Africa to central Asia and is home to more than 755 million people. The growing regions of those countries are climatically diverse, but very little information about climate and abiotic plant stress is available to ICARDA plant breeders, agronomists, and hydrologists. The ICARDA Agro-Climate Tool, a Visual Basic (6) application that can be run on Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista operating systems, was developed by ICARDA and USDA climatologists to address that need. The database from which the application derives climate information consists of weather generator parameters derived from the station data of 649 meteorological stations. From those parameters the software calculates climate statistics calculated over arbitrarily defined periods within summer or winter growing seasons at user-selected latitude-longitude coordinates, The statistics reported include: crop evapotranspiration, probabilities that cumulative rainfall and growing degree days will exceed user-specified thresholds, the probability that minimum and maximum daily temperatures will exceed user-defined temperature thresholds, and the probability of heat stress, cold stress and dry periods of varying duration.

Technical Abstract: A Visual Basic agro-climate application by climatologists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is described here. The database from which the application derives climate information consists of weather generator parameters derived from the station data of 649 meteorological stations. From those parameters the software calculates climate statistics calculated over arbitrarily defined periods within summer or winter growing seasons at user-selected latitude-longitude coordinates. The statistics reported include: crop evapotranspiration estimates derived from the FAO-56 single crop coefficient algorithm, probabilities of exceedance of both cumulative rainfall and growing degree days, the probability that minimum and maximum daily temperatures will exceed user-defined temperature thresholds, and the probability of heat stress, cold stress and dry periods of varying duration.