Coordinated Climate Crop Modelling Project (C3MP)

 

 

Main Contacts for Initiative

Alex Ruane and Sonali McDermid

Brief Description of Activity

The Coordinated Climate-Crop Modeling Project (C3MP) utilizes the global network of site-based crop modelers to conduct protocol-based sensitivity tests to sample major agricultural responses in diverse systems, environments, and model structures.  C3MP currently consists of 1100+ simulation sets examining crop responses to changes in CO2, temperature, and water (CTW). 

Overview of Participants 

100s of crop modelers from around the world.

Current Research Focus

Assessing emergent responses to climate changes; Analyzing ensemble response surfaces emulators; Evaluating regional climate responses (e.g., India)

Recent Noteworthy Findings

Impacts response surfaces have previously been described utilizing second order polynomials with interactive terms (e.g., assessing joint effects of higher [CO2] and drought), but new analysis shows benefit of more complex statistical terms for [CO2] and nitrogen.  C3MP emulators now being developed to couple with GCAM integrated assessment model, and protocols adopted for regional integrated assessments and Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison (GGCMI). 

Recent Papers/Reports

Ruane et al., 2017: An AgMIP framework for improved agricultural representation in IAMs. Environ. Res. Lett., 12, no. 12, 125003, doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa8da6.

 

 

 

 

Figure. Ensemble mean yield change (filled, colored contours) from 106 rainfed maize simulation sets responding to changes in mean temperature and [CO2], compared to no climate change baseline (represented as black square).  Gray lines indicate uncertainty across simulation sets (as percentage of baseline yield).

Prior Updates 

C3MP mobilizes international crop modelers for a coordinated investigation of climate vulnerability and climate change impacts on agriculture.

Motivation

Collaborations among crop modelers with expertise at specific modeling sites can provide new estimates of how agricultural production will be impacted by climate change and can help assess how consistent these estimates are across climate and crop models. The results from C3MP will also contribute to wider assessments undertaken by the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP).

Objective

C3MP aims to improve understanding of the impact of climate change on future agricultural production by utilizing site-calibrated crop models to coordinate projections of crop response under probabilistic climate change scenarios.Participation Procedures and ProductsCrop modelers are invited to run a set of common climate sensitivity experiments, provided by C3MP coordinators, at sites where their models are already-calibrated and detailed weather, cultivar, management and soil information are available. Should weather information not be available, the C3MP Coordinators will provide a bias-adjusted MERRA Reanalysis weather timeseries corresponding to the site. Modelers submit results via a provided template to the C3MP Coordination team. The archived results are vetted and fit with an emulator to estimate yield response surfaces (Figure 1). These response surfaces may then be used to analyze the impacts of projected climate changes, beginning with the CMIP5 GCMs (Figure 2).

Products for each site and crop include probabilistic assessments of climate change impacts and the evaluation of key agro-climatic vulnerabilities. By coordinating these experiments, the C3MP community will also be able to produce regional and global maps of key climate impact metrics and indicators. C3MP results will contribute to high-impact publications and data products.

Coordination

C3MP will be led out of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Participants will have access to all datasets and analyses to enable individual and collaborative studies within the C3MP network of modelers.

Crop model results submitted were presented at the AgMIP Global Workshop in New York City, October 28th-31st, 2013. For more information or to submit results, please contact C3MP Coordination at c3mp@agmip.org.

For additional questions, please contact Alex Ruane, Sonali McDermid and Cynthia Rosenzweig at c3mp@agmip.org.