Abstract: The land surface processes play an important role in weather and climate systems through its regulation of radiation, heat, water and momentum fluxes. Soil temperature (ST) is one of the most important parameters in the land surface processes; however, there are few extensive measurements of ST with a long time series in the world. According to the CLImatology of Parameters at the Surface (CLIPS) methodology, the output of a trusted Soil-Vegetation- Atmosphere Transfer (SVAT) scheme can be utilized instead of observations to investigate the regional climate of interest. In this study, ST in South Korea is estimated in a view of future climate using the output from a trusted SVAT scheme – the University of TOrino model of land Process Interaction with Atmosphere (UTOPIA), which is driven by a regional climate model. Here characteristic changes in ST are analyzed under the IPCC A2 future climate for 2046-2055 and 2091-2100, and are compared with those under the reference climate for 1996-2005. The UTOPIA results were validated using the observed ST in the reference climate, and the model proved to produce reasonable ST in South Korea. The UTOPIA simulations indicate that ST increases due to environmental change, especially in air temperature (AT), in the future climate. The increment of ST is proportional to that of AT except for winter. In wintertime, the ST variations are different from region to region mainly due to variations in snow cover, which keeps ST from significant changes by the climate change.

Abstract: In this study at the regional scale, the model DSSAT CERES-Wheat was applied in order to simulate the cultivation of winter durum wheat (WW) and to estimate the green water (GW) and the blue water (BW) through a dual-step approach (with and without supplemental irrigation). The model simulation covered a period of 30 years for three scenarios including a reference period and two future scenarios based on forecasted global average temperature increase of 2 and 5 degrees C. The GW and BW contribution for evapo transpiration requirement is presented and analyzed on a distributed scale related to the Puglia region (Southern Italy) characterized by high evaporative demand of the atmosphere. The GW component was dominant compared to BW, covering almost 90% of the ETc of WW Under a Baseline scenario the weight BW was 11%, slightly increased in the future scenarios. GW appeared dependent on the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall during the crop cycle, and to the hydraulic characteristics of soil for each calculation unit. After considering the effects of climate change on irrigation requirement of WW we carried out an example of analysis in order to verify the economic benefit of supplemental irrigation for WW cultivation. The probability that irrigation generates a negative or zero income ranged between 55 and 60% and climate change did not impact the profitability of irrigation for WW as simulated for the economic and agro-pedoclimatic conditions of Puglia region considered in this study.

Abstract: Future farming systems are challenged to adapt to the changing socio-economic and bio-physical environment in order to remain competitive and to meet the increasing requirements for food and fibres. The scientific challenge is to evaluate the consequences of predefined scenarios, identify current “best” practices and explore future adaptation strategies at farm level. The objective of this article is to assess the impact of different climate change and socio-economic scenarios on arable farming systems in Flevoland (the Netherlands) and to explore possible adaptation strategies. Data Envelopment Analysis was used to identify these current “best” practices while bio-economic modelling was used to calculate a number of important economic and environmental indicators in scenarios for 2050. Relative differences between yields with and without climate change and technological change were simulated with a crop bio-physical model and used as a correction factors for the observed crop yields of current “best” practices. We demonstrated the capacity of the proposed methodology to explore multiple scenarios by analysing the importance of drivers of change, while accounting for variation between individual farms. It was found that farmers in Flevoland are in general technically efficient and a substantial share of the arable land is currently under profit maximization. We found that climate change increased productivity in all tested scenarios. However, the effects of different socio-economic scenarios (globalized and regionalized economies) on the economic and environmental performance of the farms were variable. Scenarios of a globalized economy where the prices of outputs were simulated to increase substantially might result in increased average gross margin and lower average (per ha) applications of crop protection and fertilizers. However, the effects might differ between different farm types. It was found that, the abolishment of sugar beet quota and changes of future prices of agricultural inputs and outputs in such socio-economic scenario (i.e. globalized economy) caused a decrease in gross margins of smaller (in terms of economic size) farms, while gross margin of larger farms increased. In scenarios where more regionalized economies and a moderate climate change are assumed, the future price ratios between inputs and outputs are shown to be the key factors for the viability of arable farms in our simulations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.