Climate Services Archives - climateservices.it CNR-IBE

Bridging the communication gap in agrometeorological services: Enhancing the uptake and effectiveness for users in developing countries

Web Editor — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 14:50:50 +0000

Over the past decades, advancements in agrometeorological monitoring and forecasting have been driven by technology, infrastructure, and capacity building. Literature highlights that agrometeorological services support agricultural decision-making, boosting farmers’ resilience and income globally. However, challenges in communication and dissemination limit their effectiveness, particularly for smallholder farmers in remote areas. The problem extends beyond media type and format to issues of accessibility, comprehensibility, and users’ trust. While technology has enabled faster dissemination, there is a risk of new services being technology-centered rather than user-focused. This non-systematic literature review delves into effective communication strategies for agrometeorological information in developing countries, reviewing existing knowledge and presenting case studies. It addresses how to ensure access to information, identify efficient communication channels, use inclusive technologies, enhance users’ understanding, make information actionable, and gather feedback on information effectiveness. Stakeholders’ engagement methods include a variety of participatory approaches and iterative monitoring, evaluation and learning processes. The choice of communication channels significantly affects information reach. Despite the rise of ICT, challenges in access and understanding persist, especially for marginalized groups, making simple communication technologies like rural radios still crucial for last-mile dissemination. The review emphasizes that no single communication approach fits all situations. Key principles of coproduction and user engagement in climate services are essential for effective agrometeorological communication. Future directions include enhancing the legitimacy and salience of services by integrating local knowledge, expanding scope to include herders and off-farm stakeholders, building capacity among intermediaries and users, soliciting feedback, and fostering public–private partnerships for scaling and sustainability.

Keywords: Agricultural Meteorology; Communication; Climate Services; Co-production; Stakeholders engagement; Best practices

The post Bridging the communication gap in agrometeorological services: Enhancing the uptake and effectiveness for users in developing countries appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

The added value of the process in climate services co-production: Lessons from Niger

Vieri Tarchiani — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 10:08:35 +0000

Climate services are recognized as an essential tool for sustainable development in strategic and climate-sensitive sectors. In developing countries, particularly in Africa, the literature offers successful examples of application, especially in the agricultural sector, which is dramatically sensitive to climate variability and change. While, initially, particular emphasis was placed on the outcomes of these services and the benefits they provide to users, several authors, more recently, have focused their attention on the process. A climate service is understood as a cyclical process in which the different actors interact, exchange knowledge, and establish relationships and mutual trust. This co-production process serves primarily to bridge the gap between science and society and is particularly appropriate for developing countries. Several authors claim the benefit of the co-production process improving the service usability, but rarely the intrinsic value of the process is recognized. This study aims to describe the process and document its added value using the example of Niger as a case study, where two services addressing drought and floods have recently been developed, tested, and operationalized. This experience allows for inferring lessons that can be useful for researchers and practitioners in developed and developing contexts. The value of the collaboration between different disciplines (transdisciplinarity) and roles (complementarity), and the iterative and interactive learning process emerge as key elements allowing a continuous improvement of the services and the strengthened relationship among actors. The results of this process, albeit qualitatively described in the paper, could guide researchers and practitioners in adopting such an approach and could represent a tangible example for funders and policymakers of the process’s added value. Nevertheless, the article recognizes the need to develop a methodological framework for quali/quantitatively assessing the added value of the co-production process and suggests four dimensions to be considered in further research. Finally, the paper recommends the capitalization of pilot experiences through the national and global frameworks for climate services.

The post The added value of the process in climate services co-production: Lessons from Niger appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

Climate stressors modulate interannual olive yield at province level in Italy: A composite index approach to support crop management

Web Editor — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 10:34:01 +0000

Although a large part of Italy is characterized by a Mediterranean climate intrinsically highly suitable for olive cultivation, farmers may experience variable interannual yields with associated agronomic and management costs. A detailed overview of major climate stressors and their ongoing impacts on olive yield variability at a broad spatial–temporal scale across Italy could improve the understanding of how interannual olive yields are modulated by seasonal local climate and would enhance the development of actionable services to alert stakeholders of potential climate risks. We analysed aggregated olive yield data from the Italian National Statistics Institute (ISTAT) at the provincial level during 2006–2020, and several climatic variables from the Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as a basis to (i) explore olive yield trends and inter-annual variations over the whole country; (ii) identify major seasonal climate stressors likely responsible for the largest variations in yield and (iii) develop a composite index that summarizes the risk of having exceptionally low yields due to the co-occurrence of multiple stressors. To this end, we defined two extreme classes of yield, namely, exceptionally low and high yields (LY and HY, respectively) and explored the climatic variables aggregated on a bimonthly time scale that influenced yield outcomes. Our analysis showed that exceptionally low yields have been erratically increasing since 2014 with temperature-related variables having the highest impact, especially a relatively warm winter and cool early autumn. These period-specific variables were major components of the resulting composite index predicting the likelihood of LY ranging from 28% to 49% due to increasing stress effects. Possible explanations of our findings are discussed, including the proliferation of the olive fly. We suggest the composite risk approach could lay the groundwork for an integrated meteorological seasonal forecasting system that provides timely insights on factors affecting within-season olive yield development.

The post Climate stressors modulate interannual olive yield at province level in Italy: A composite index approach to support crop management appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

Modelling risk hurricane elements in potentially affected areas by a GIS system

Web Editor — Fri, 03 Feb 2023 08:01:10 +0000

In the last decade, modelling hurricanes in potentially affected areas using geographical information systems (GIS) and geospatial cyberinfrastracture (GCI) has become a major topic of research. Despite some basic approaches, some unsolved questions are still under discussion.

The disastrous effects of hurricanes on communities are well known, however, there is a need to better understand the hazard contributions of the different components related to a hurricane, such as storm surges, floods and high winds. In this paper, the selected approach is to determine an onset zoning from a set of attributes that are considered to govern the hurricane while examining the influence of each individual component that produces the final exposure. To this end, this study assesses the different components using parameters derived from topography, bathymetry and hurricane physical indexes. Key attributes are the river network, the topography, the wetness index and the offline bathymetry.

Complementary data include the CMORPH rain dataset and the hurricane track together with its structure model, both based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) datasets. Total hazard results were then overlaid with population data in the overall assessment of elements at risk. The approach, which made use of a number of available global and free datasets, was then validated on a regional basis using ground data collected by the World Food Programme (WFP) over the study area (Central America region) for a specific hurricane.

The post Modelling risk hurricane elements in potentially affected areas by a GIS system appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

Access, Uptake, Use and Impacts of Agrometeorological Services in Sahelian Rural Areas: The Case of Burkina Faso

Web Editor — Sun, 20 Feb 2022 09:49:27 +0000

Agrometeorological services, as part of weather and climate services, are expected to play a key role in supporting sub-Saharan agriculture facing climate change and variability. In the Sahel, smallholder farmers relying on rainfed crop production systems are particularly vulnerable to climate change and variability because of low resilience and coping capacity. The provision of agrometeorological services is growing across Africa, but they often remain inaccessible for the majority of smallholder farmers or are not very relevant to support on-the-ground decision-making. Our work aims to demonstrate the hypothesis that agrometeorological services can effectively improve agricultural productivity and sustainability provided that appropriate mechanisms are put in place to ensure access, uptake and action. The paper illustrates the case study of Burkina Faso, where the National Meteorological Service, with the support of the World Meteorological Organization, engaged in the provision of accessible, reliable and relevant agrometeorological services for farmers. The study demonstrates that farmers, even in remote rural areas, are willing to profit from weather and climate services for strategic and tactical decisions in agricultural management because of relevant economic benefits. These benefits can be summarized as a 40% reduction in production costs and a 41% increase in income. Results also highlight positive environmental impacts such as the reduction by 50% in the use of fertilizers. Nevertheless, the study concludes that in order to scale up weather and climate services in West Africa, a new business model released from the development projects approach should be explored.

The post Access, Uptake, Use and Impacts of Agrometeorological Services in Sahelian Rural Areas: The Case of Burkina Faso appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

Climate services for drought and fire danger estimation on various time scales

Massimiliano Pasqui — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:26:07 +0000

Wildfires are critical natural hazards, both in the Mediterranean and boreal regions of Europe, causing significant environmental and economic damages and losses. Operational drought and fire risk forecast services on sub-seasonal, seasonal and climatic scale allow fire protection authorities to increase preparedness and response in drought and fire related emergencies and to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies in these regions.

The post Climate services for drought and fire danger estimation on various time scales appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.

A Counting Process Approach for Trend Assessment of Drought Condition

Massimiliano Pasqui — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:25:57 +0000

This paper discusses some methodological aspects of the historical analysis of drought, particularly the trend assessment. The Standardized Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is widely used as a measure of drought condition. Since different SPEI thresholds allow classifying the risk into moderate, severe, and extreme, the drought occurrence becomes a counting process. In this framework, would a statistical trend test based on a Non-Homogeneous Poisson Process (NHPP) give a similar result of the nonparametric Mann–Kendall (MK) test? In this paper, we demonstrate that the NHPP approach is able to characterize the information given by the classical MK approach in term of drought risk classes. Furthermore, we show how it can be used to reinforce the framework of drought trend analysis in combination with a standard non-parametric approach. At a global scale, we find that:(1) areas under increasing risk of drought identified by the NHPP approach are considerably larger in comparison to those identified by MK; and (2) the results of the two tests are different during crucial periods such as hydrological droughts in winter and spring

The post A Counting Process Approach for Trend Assessment of Drought Condition appeared first on climateservices.it CNR-IBE.