Copernicus C3S Global Agriculture

Climate change affects agriculture in a number of ways, including through changes in temperature, rainfall, and climate extremes. To deal with uncertainty of future weather conditions, information is needed on when and where water shortages are to be expected.

Agro-climatic data products for sustainable food production

In order to safeguard future food production, farmers and agencies need information on global water resources under climate change to adapt their production strategies. The Copernicus Climate Information for Agriculture contract (2017-2019) develops a set of operational services with high-impact climate information aimed for the agricultural and food sector in order to enable them to make informed decisions. End-users from many market segments are involved to provide market information and address global aspects of food security.

Proven state of the art technologies on earth observation will be combined with crop modelling to render crop-climate data for regional and global operating agribusinesses, water and irrigation agencies, agricultural policy and administration, and the food security research community. The service will deliver agricultural indicators that will interface with the Climate Data Store (CDS) of the Copernicus Climate Change Service:

• Climate forcing data for crop models - All time scales, downscaled, bias corrected.
• Water based indicators - Soil moisture, groundwater recharge, evapotranspiration.
• Agro-climatic indicators - Growing degree days, Huglin index, Cold/heat stress days.
• Climate enhanced RS based indicators - Dry Matter Productivity, Actual Evapotranspiration.

By providing relevant, credible and legitimate agro-water-climatic data products to decision makers in food security we pursue our ambition to improve food security in a safe living environment as addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals.