Constraints and opportunities in applying seasonal climate forecasts in agriculture

Abstract

Climate variability has an enormous impact on agricultural productivity, rural livelihoods, and economics at farm, regional, and national scales. An every-day challenge facing farmers is to make management decisions in the face of this climate variability. Being able to minimise losses in droughts and take advantage of favourable seasons is the promise of seasonal climate forecasts. The criteria for their adoption depends on what variables are forecast, their accuracy, the likely economic and/or natural resource benefits and how well they are communicated. In reviewing how current seasonal climate forecasts meet these criteria, it is clear that they offer considerable potential to buffer the effects of climate variability in agriculture, particularly in regions that have high levels of inter-annual rainfall variability and are strongly influenced by El Niño and La Niña events. However, the current skill, lead time, relevance to agricultural decisions, and communication techniques are not well enough advanced and/or integrated to lead to widespread confidence and adoption by farmers. The current challenges are to continue to improve forecast reliability and to better communicate the probabilistic outputs of seasonal climate forecasts to decision makers.