Project Number: 6208-13000-005-06
Project Type: Trust

Start Date: Oct 01, 2002
End Date: Sep 30, 2005

Objective:
The ICARDA mandate region includes North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and West and Central Asia, and is marked by considerable diversity in cimatic conditions. The region contains widely different moisture regimes ranging from humid, sub-humid, semi-arid, and arid to hyper-arid. In addition, temperature regimes also vary considerably. The goal of this research is to conduct a comprehensive and high resolution agro-climatological survey which accurately documents this variation over important growing areas.

Approach:
Climatological records over portions of the ICARDA mandate region are not well sampled in space and/or time. As a result, a primary challenge of this research is to develop realistic assessments of rainfall and temperature variability and drought risk with sparse data records. This challenge will be addressed by exploring and developing a three part research methodology based on: 1) the extrapolation potential of climatic zoning, 2) the potential use of statistical fitting and weather generators to produce synthetic series of the main climatic variables at daily time steps, and 3) the capabilities of statistical spatialization methods.

Project Team

Mauget, Steven

Project Annual Reports

FY 2003

Related National Programs

Water Quality & Management (201)   Integrated Farming Systems (207)