Climate change risk assessment for plant production in Serbia

Abstract

Extreme weather and climate events over the past years have been bringing damage and losses to agricultural production in Serbia. As a part of the development of the National climate change adaptation plan, weather and climate events and extremes that may significantly influence the growth of agricultural plant, their quality and yields, were defined as a first step in the climate change risk assessment within the agriculture sector. Such events included: high summer temperature, low winter temperature, spring frost, drought, intense precipitation, floods, hail and storms, but also slow-onset changes such as inter annual redistribution of precipitation and rising air temperatures. Based on the selected potentially dangerous phenomena, bioclimatic indices were formulated for various fruit species, grapevine, strategically important field crops, meadows and pastures. The degree of exposure to selected weather and climate events was assessed for the past, present and future, based on the analysis of daily data on temperature and precipitation from the eOBS gridded observations dataset (2000-2019) and projections of 8 regional climate models under the RCP8.5 greenhouse gases emission scenario, for the periods 1986-2005, 2021-2040, 2041-2060, 2081-2100. The vulnerability assessment was done for the administrative districts and the entire territory of the Republic of Serbia based on the valuation of the severity of socio-economic consequences that considered events might have. The risk assessment was done combining the estimated levels of exposure and vulnerability.