1. Climate Change and Sustainable Agricultural Intensification
Mark New

2. Approaches to Intensification
Grow crops in new areas
Improve productivity in existing areas
Multiple cropping
Improved or different crop varieties
Enhanced inputs – irrigation, fertiliser, etc.
Better farm management
Economic and institutional incentives
Climate change may limit or enable intensification

3. Climate Change Uncertainty

4. Uncertainty Increases as Function of…
Spatial scale
Global -> regional -> local
Temporal scale
Decadal -> annual -> monthly -> daily
Means -> variance -> extreme events
Process complexity
Temperature -> humidity -> precipitation
Tropics -> mid-latitudes -> sub-tropics

5. IGP Monsoon Rainfall – GCM Skill

6. IGP Monsoon Rainfall – GCM Projections

7. Does Downscaling “Add Value”?
300km Global Model
50km Regional Model
Observed 10km
25km Regional Model

8. Does Downscaling “Add Value”?
10 RCMs, driven by the same GCM

9. Climate Uncertainty is Here to Stay
In the near term
Internal variability
Model uncertainty
Longer term
Scenario / forcing uncertainty
Downscaling
Improved understanding of uncertainty?

10. So What are the Options? Climate Compatible Intensification
Strategies that are robust across climate uncertainties
Portfolios of crop varieties or generalist crops
Flexibility in options to avoid maladaptation
Enhance resilience / productivity to current climate stresses
Risk management – learning from seasonal forecasting
Informed by appropriate analysis of climate model data

11. Better Analysis of Climate Model Data
Model evaluation and filtering with agriculturally relevant indices

12. Model Evaluation & Filtering

13. Analysis of New Climate Model Data
New Centennial GCM Projections
Multi GCM-RCM ensembles – CORDEX
New decadal forecasts