Analysis of future climate scenarios and their impact on agriculture in eastern Arkansas, United States

Abstract

Impact of climate change on crop growth is dynamic and difficult to quantify due to heterogeneity of the associated effects and their interactions within the Earth system. The main objective of this study is to establish how future climate change might affect agriculture, through an assessment of temperature and precipitation driven parameters. These include percentage number of rainy days with extreme precipitation, percentage of extreme precipitation relative to wet days, first fall frost days, last spring frost days, growing degree days, growing season length and the total precipitation. Results show modest increase in total precipitation with a slight increase in extreme precipitation, representing up to 2.2% increase by 2060 under representative concentration pathway (RCP 8.5) scenario. There would be late first fall frost days, early last spring frost days and increased growing season length by up to 2 weeks in 2060. The growing degree days are projected to increase under all scenarios for all crops, with cotton showing the largest increase of up to 37% relative to the baseline period.

Journal of Water and Land Development

“…In the country, air temperature is most affected by geographical location -latitude (determines the insolation conditions), altitude, orographic conditions, continentality or maritimity indicating the distance from the sea, etc. [KOVALENKO et al 2019;MAGUGU et al 2018]. Temperature conditions of Slovakia are characterized by extreme variety which is caused by orography of landscape.…”