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Farmers can 'see' into future climate

8 Dec 2011

SciDev.net reports that developing-world farmers may soon be able to 'see' into the future through a tool that will help them adapt to climate change by simulating how their crop production will be affected 20 years from now. The 'Climate Analogues' open access tool was presented on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP17) in Durban.

The tool was designed by a team of five scientists funded with US$100,000 from the Colombian government and will be field tested in 2012 by farmers in Ghana, Nepal, and Tanzania.

The analogues are sites with similar climates or other factors, such as crops, soils or socio-economic characteristics. The tool locates sites where the climate today is similar to that predicted for another location in the future and enables farmers and policymakers to determine how to adapt to such climates in the future.

"It is very abstract when people talk about a world in 2050 without actually being able see what it is," Andy Jarvis, scientist and programme leader at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) told SciDev.Net. "So the idea behind this kind of tool is to use all of the variability and diversity of climate we have today as a means of finding people's futures."

Read the full article on www.scidev.net.