Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Below are the some of the factors that are responsible for
climate change:
1. Natural causes such as changes in the earth's revolution,
changes in the area of the continents, variations in the
solar system and so forth.
2. Owing to human activities, the concentrations of carbon
dioxide and certain other harmful atmospheric gases
have been increasing. The present level of carbon dioxide
is 325 ppm and it is expected to reach 700 ppm by the end
of this century because of the present trend of burning
forests, grasslands and fossil fuels. Few models predicted
an increase of 2.3-4.6°C in the average temperature and
precipitation per day from 10% to 32% in India.
Role of crop
modelling in
climate change
studies
In recent years, there has been a growing concern that changes
in climate will lead to a significant damage to both market and
no-market sectors. Climate change will have a negative effect in
many countries. But the adaptation of farmers to climate change,
through changes in farming practices, cropping patterns and use
of new technologies will help to ease the impact. The variability
of our climate and especially the associated weather extremes
is currently one of the concerns of the scientific community as
well as the general community. The application of crop mod-
els to study the potential impact of climate change and climate
variability provides a direct link among models, agrometeorol-
ogy and the concerns of the society. As climate change deals
with future issues, the use of crop simulation models compared
to surveys proves to be a more scientific approach to study the
impact of climate change on agricultural production and world
food security. DSSAT is one of the first packages that modified
weather simulation generators or introduced a package to evalu-
ate the performance of models for climate change situations.
3.4
Applications and uses of crop growth models
in agriculture
Crop growth models are being developed to meet the demands
under the following situations in agricultural meteorology:
1. When farmers face the difficult task of managing their
crops on poor soils in harsh and risky climates
2. When scientists and research managers need tools that
can assist them in taking an integrated approach to
