Daily weather simulator designed to calculate crop irrigation requirements

11.10.2022
  • A research team from the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture (IAS-CSIC) and the University of Cordoba has developed an open source software that contains information from 4,000 weather stations in 91 countries. In addition, it generates data for up to 50 years and can be used to quantify events such as cold accumulation in fruit trees and the probability of rain or drought.

IAS-CSIC and University of Cordoba researcher Francisco Villalobos, author of the study.

IAS-CSIC and University of Cordoba researcher Francisco Villalobos, author of the study.

A research team from the Institute of Sustainable Agriculture (IAS-CSIC) and the University of Cordoba has designed a daily climate simulator to calculate crop irrigation needs. Using mathematical models, the software also generates climate data from regions where there are no weather stations, where the available information is of poor quality or difficult to access.

One of the novelties highlighted by the researchers is that this program compiles and integrates data from more than 4,000 weather stations around the world. By downloading the ClimaSG tool, the user has access to all these sources of information and to average climate data, which can be modified manually. In this way, he can customize values such as the average temperature oscillation or the percentage change in precipitation to obtain probabilities of rain, frost or drought and design irrigation plans to avoid crop losses.

ClimaSG Interface

ClimaSG tool interface.

For example, if a weather station forecasts a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, this value can be entered into the program to simulate what the future climate would be like. "Thus, this tool would calculate data such as the probability of precipitation and the daily maximum and minimum temperature, useful for designing irrigation plans," Francisco Villalobos, a researcher at IAS-CSIC and the University of Cordoba, explains to the Descubre Foundation.

By means of this software, the user can anticipate future climate scenarios, generating series of up to 50 years. In addition, the tool allows the generation of reports and graphs that facilitate the understanding of the results obtained.

Climatic data

The scientists also point out that the data produced by this program, available openly and free of charge for Windows devices, can be used to calculate irrigation needs, cold accumulation in fruit trees and the probability of rainfall, among other things. In addition, it can be used for teaching, for analysis of real data or future climate estimates. It is also useful as a complementary tool for research, since the information anticipated by the program is statistically equal to that which would be obtained at a weather station.

For example, this program would calculate climatic data that could be complemented with agricultural simulation tools. Thus, experts would calculate the agricultural yield, i.e., the amount of product obtained.

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