Climate Change and extreme times: droughts and impact on the Argentine agricultural sector

José L. Aiello – Gustavo V. Necco Charlemagne – July 23, 2021

The issue of climate change and extreme weather has been installed at all decision-making levels, from governments to local communities. It also affects agricultural production and grain markets.

Introduction by the DIYEE-BCR

We are pleased to present two top-level specialists to analyze the problem cited in a set of reports by our scientific advisors for the Strategic Guide for Agriculture, Dr. José Luis Aiello, and Dr. Gustavo Víctor Necco Carlomagno. Their backgrounds as per below:

Dr. Gustavo Víctor Necco Carlomagno has a Bachelor’s Degree in Meteorological Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and a Doctor Sc. (Meteorology) from the University of Paris VI, France. He headed the Synoptic Research Institute of the National Meteorological Service. He was a researcher for the French EOLE project, Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique, ENS / CNRS, Paris, and a visiting scientist at the Development Division of the NMC (National Meteorological Center), Washington DC, USA, among other activities. He is a researcher at the University of Buenos Aires, advisor to the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), and Member of the Group of Experts on Meteorological Satellites of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Geneva, Switzerland. He was a professor in the Department of Meteorology of the UBA, He was a member “in tuiti Personae”, of the Conseil de Perfectionnement, of the French Ecole Nationale de la Météorologie, (ENM), located in Toulouse, and an “Ex-officio” member of the Coordinating Committee (COCOM) of the Permanent Conference of Directors from the Standing Conference of Heads of Training Institutions of National Meteorological Services, SCHOTI Former director of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI) among other highly relevant positions.

Dr. José Luis Aiello is a Doctor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. He postgraduate at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, Miramare, Italy, and Professor of Meteorology, Faculty of Astronomical and Geophysical Sciences of the National University of La Plata. Expert in charge of scientific activities in the National Meteorological Service and the National Commission for Space Activities, Former Member of the Research Group of the Latin American Energy Organization and was Scientific Director of the Exametnet Program in agreement with NASA of the United States and Responsible for the Argentine-German Space Cooperation. Founder of the SIBER Projects of the Entre Ríos Province Cereal Exchange and GEA of the Rosario Province Stock Exchange, currently with the position of Scientific Advisor and President of JOLAP S.A. and CCA, consultants on climate issues applied to Agricultural Production that attend GEA-BCR.

Climate change and associated extreme weather conditions have produced the greatest volatilities in crop production and the prices of grains and oilseeds and will continue to do so for years to come. The evidence is overwhelming and it is necessary to have algorithms that address the detection and prognosis of these extreme climates. At GEA-BCR we have been working on these issues for a few years. Short-term forecasts (one week to 15 days) are those utilized by users in the area of ​​agriculture, but they are not the most adequate to deal precisely with the origin of volatility in production and markets.

The alarming effects of climate change and extreme weather led us to present a report on “Droughts and the agricultural sector”, a task that seeks to inform about this problem through four notes:

  • Generalities and basic concepts
  • Predictability
  • Effects of climate change
  • Impacts in Argentina

The issue of climate change and its implications has already been installed at all decision-making levels, from governments to local communities, despite pressure from certain “skeptics” who deny or belittle the reports of the scientific community, in order to defend certain economic interests and pull attention from the main problem. There are those who, without looking for factual information (physical and biological) about climate change, simply do not believe in it. The recent upsurge of heatwaves, fires, and droughts in those days has sensitized public opinion on these issues. We can see this first hand in the great metropolitan area of Rosario city with the historical downspout of the Paraná River.

In an ever-warming world, we unfortunately expect the risk of some types of extreme weather events to increase. For example, with rising temperatures in most of the world, we expect more heatwaves. At the same time, warmer air is likely to hold more water, thus making it highly probable to expect harsher and more extreme rains.

Individual meteorological events are ultimately unique and are always caused by a combination of different factors, including local variability in climate, conditions on the Earth’s surface and their interactions with the atmosphere, large-scale patterns of weather conditions, ocean temperatures, and changes in external forces (example, greenhouse gases, aerosols). Therefore, it cannot be said that an extreme weather event was “caused” by warming or associated climate change. However, we can estimate whether, and to what extent, the probability or intensity of an extreme event has changed due to human-induced climate change.

The growing impact of human activities not only affects the climate but also the global environment and is then referred to as Global Environmental Change (GEC) that addresses large-scale chemical, biological, geological, and physical disturbances of the surface of the Earth, the surface of the ocean, the terrestrial surface and the hydrological cycle, paying special attention, on time scales of decades to centuries, to human-caused disturbances and their impacts on society.

Human action denotes a recent behavior characterized by the transverse and disproportionate alteration in all the Earth’s ecosystems, particularly by the extraction and use of fossil fuels for energy. The situation is related to the increase in techno-industrial productivity, as well as the overwhelming growth of the population together with hyper-urbanization, changes in the soil and vegetation cover. All this impacts the climate, producing changes that are reinforced and intensified by anthropogenic processes of various kinds.

Regarding future climate trends, estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the UN, based on numerical simulations show, despite uncertainties, that even in the most optimistic scenarios warming will continue (and its consequences), unless emissions are strongly reduced. At the UN meeting on climate change COP-21, Paris 2015, the world agreed that by the end of the century the increase in global temperature should not be above 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. The goal was to limit the rise to 1.5 °C, if possible, but there was no progress. Under this agreement, the countries promised to meet again every five years and increase their carbon reduction targets. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow, planned for 2020, was postponed to November of this year.

According to current estimates, the world is expected to exceed the 1.5°C limits in 12 years or less, and reach 3°C of warming by the end of the century and in the Glasgow meeting, there could be an increase in cuts to carbon emissions. The situation is urgent (the UN Secretary-General recently warned that we are waging a “suicidal war” against nature) and there are already countries that have unilaterally committed to making a legal commitment to zero net emissions (the United Kingdom in 2019, The European Union in 2020 and recently China, one of the largest emitters).

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the world is not invulnerable and that it can be affected in ways that cannot be controlled. It caused an economic upheaval that made governments react with stimulus packages to reactivate their economies. We hope that once overcome, through universal vaccination programs, attention will turn to another global concern: climate change, and actions to limit its consequences (for example, the reduction of emissions, limitation of consumption, use of renewable energies, waste treatment, etc.)

A “business-as-usual” approach could lead us to an unsustainable planetary situation.

Source: https://bcr.com.ar/

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