Abstract: Agricultural elements have been covered in the scenario process on shared socio-economic  pathways (SSPs) incompletely and pathways have not been specified for the future  development of the European Union. We will therefore devise a general framework on  European Representative Agricultural Pathways (EU-RAPs), where we cover different  aspects of agricultural development, as for example European and domestic agricultural and  environmental policies, or different livestock and crop management systems, and describe  future developments of the confederation of the countries of the European Union. For the  agricultural elements we distinguish between elements that can be derived from the  definitions in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, as for example irrigation efficiencies  which are linked to technological development, and elements that have to be newly devised  such as the development of the Common Agricultural Policy. For the future of the European  Union we develop five different worlds which correspond to the SSPs. Finally both  frameworks are combined.

Abstract: While crop models are widely used to assess the change in crop productivity with climate change, their skill in assessing irrigation water demand or the risk of crop failure in large area impact assessments is relatively unknown. The objective of this study is to investigate which aspects of modeling crop water use (reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0), soil water extraction, soil evaporation, soil water balance and root growth) contributes most to the variability in estimates of maize crop water use and the risk of crop failure, and demonstrate the resulting uncertainty in a climate change impact study for Europe. The SIMPLACE crop modeling framework was used to couple the LINTUL5 crop model in factorial combinations of 2-3 different approaches for simulating the 5 aspects of crop water use, resulting in 51 modeling approaches. Using experiments in France and New Zeland, analysis of total sensitivity revealed that ET0 explained the most variability in both irrigated maize water use and rainfed grain yield levels, with soil evaporation also imporatant in the French experiment. In the European impact study, net irrigation requirement differed by 36% between the Penman and Hargreaves ET0 methods in the baseline period. Average EU grain yields were similar between models, but differences approached 1-2 tonnes in parts of France and Southern Europe. EU wide esimates of crop failure in the historical period ranged between 5.4 years for Priestley-Taylor to every 7.9 years for the Penman ET0 methods. While the uncertainty in absolute values between models was significant, estimates of relative changes were similar between models, confirming the utility of crop models in assessing climate change impacts. If ET0 estimates in crop models can be improved, through the use of appropriate methods, uncertainty in irrigation water demand as well as in yield estimates under drought can be reduced.