3.1Overview

Chapter1 has focused on large climate anomalies that sometimes reach thesize of continents. This section offers a closer look at allcountries, including the 30 countries that, together produce andcommercialise 80 of maize, rice, wheat and soybean. The sectionillustrates the fact that even countries of minor agricultural andgeopolitical relevance are exposed to extreme conditions, and deserve mentioning. They may badly suffer from food insecurity and, for thepoorest of them, may have to divert meagre foreign exchange reservesto complement food supply though imports. In most cases, this willbe at the expense of development projects and the setback may lastseveral years.

Figure 3.1. Global map of January-April 2016 rainfall (RAIN) by countryand sub-national areas, departure from 15YA (percentage)

Figure 3.2. Global map of January-April 2016 temperature (TEMP) bycountry and sub-national areas, departure from 15YA (degrees)

Figure 3.3. Global map of January-April 2016 PAR (RADPAR) by country andsub-national areas, departure from 15YA (percentage)

Figure 3.4. Global map of January-April 2016 biomass (BIOMSS) by countryand sub-national areas, departure from 5YA (percentage)

Table 3.1. CropWatch agroclimaticand agronomic indicators for January-April 2016, departure from 5YA and 15YA

Note: Departuresare expressed in relative terms (percentage) for all variables, except fortemperature, for which absolute departure in degrees Celsius is given. Zeromeans no change from the average value; Relative departures are calculated as(C-R)/R*100, with C=current value and R=reference value, which is the five-year(5YA) or fifteen-year average (15YA) for the same period (January-April).

A.Drought

Thecountries below all suffered a rainfall deficit in excess of 25% overtheir agricultural areas during the reporting period. They aregrouped, as far as possible and relevant, by the same geographicalareas as in chapter 1.

Mediterranean countries

With the exception of Egypt, where the rainfall deficit over thereporting period was 28% and which depends very little on rainfallfor crops, all the listed countries experienced the secondconsecutive RAIN shortfall. For many of them, the drought over thereporting period was even more severe than during the previousOctober to January months, which were covered in the February 2016CropWatch bulletin. There is a well defined pattern of more severewater deficit in the southern Mediterranean than in the north, butinside the groups east and west suffered equally. Turkey is aconspicuous exception, with a precipitation excess of 13% over thisJFMA period and a very slight deficit (-1%) over the previous one.

The country which suffered the most severe and prolonged droughtbetween October and April is Morocco with a deficit of 68% over thereporting period (54% during the previous one)1.For the current period, drought was most intense in Lebanon (-71%,-54%) and in Cyprus (-68%, -44%), followed by Libya (-63%, -42%) andby Israel (-61%, -38%). Remaining countries all experienced deficitsof 42 or 43% (Algeria, Tunisia, Syria), between 33% and 35% (Greece,Slovakia, Portugal2)and of 25% (Spain, Italy). All countries grow winter crops,especially wheat and barley, which were thus exposed to moisturestress during much of their growing season.

South and South-east Asia

This is the area referred to as “Punjab and Gujarat to New Zealand”in Chapter 1. For many countries, drought set in in the reportingperiod, after a close to average of excess precipitation spell at theend of 2015. This includes Cambodia (-67%, +23%), Thailand (-54%,0%), Sri Lanka (-50%, +9%) and Nepal (-43%, +92%). IN maritimesouth-east Asia and Oceania, the current period is the second periodof relative drought, even if the equatorial areas, which normallyrecord very abundant precipitation, in large excess of croprequirements, did suffer relatively little, for instance in Indonesia(+3%, -24%).

Decreasing deficits occurred from the Philippines (-77%, -18%) to NewCaledonia (-69%, -60%), Brunei Darussalaam (-56%, -1%), Malaysia(-45%, -24%), New Zealand(-39%, -66%) and Timor Leste (-39%, -66%).

East, Southern Africa and Western Africa

East and southern Africa countries have received a lot of mediaattention from the middle of 2015 (Ethiopia) and the end of the year.They are covered with additional qualitative information in thesection on disasters (chapter 5.2). In Western Africa, which has notbeen mentioned so far because, except in the very south, crops areabout the be planted now, two countries deserve mentioning, SierraLeone (-30%, +9%) and Equatorial Guinea (-43%, -30%).

In the east, in addition to Ethiopia (-19%, +2%) and some pastorallowlands in Kenya, we need to list northern Sudan (-56%, 78%),Eritrea (-40%, +54%), Rwanda (-39%, -35%), Somalia (-34%, 53%). Inthe south, only Lesotho crosses the -25% deficit line (-25%, -44%).

Central and south America

With the exception of Cuba (-25%, 19%) and similar to the situationin the Mediterranean, most countries in the area are in their secondconsecutive drought quarter, with the intensity of the shortageusually decreasing from he Caribbean and Central America to theequatorial and temperate southern part of the continent: Trinidad andTobago (-67%, -53%), Dominica (-66%, -49%), Panama (-41%, -29%),Nicaragua (-45%, -22%), Costa_Rica (-44%, -23%), FrenchGuiana (-29%, -82%), Colombia (-29%, -82%) and Chile (-27%, -55%).

B. Precipitation excess

This section focuses on precipitation anomalies in excesses of 50%.The large precipitation anomaly that stretches from the Sahel acrossthe warm and cold deserts of Africa and Asia as far as easterncentral Asia was already noted in the previous CropWatch Bulletin. Although less marked because of close to average rainfall in theeastern Caspian, the same feature persisted into the currentreporting period. It is not necessarily associated with El Niño,which usually displays weak correlation with West African and CentralAsian Climate. It is, however, very compatible with global warmingand the finding that allpalaeoclimatologicalevidence, from Dakar to China, points at a one-to-one associationbetween high temperatures and wetter conditions, at all time scales(years to geological periods). This is also illustrated by the recentimproving rainfall trend observed 1988 in the Sahel (Petit-Maire,1990, 1999, 2000).

The countries where the effect is most visible constitutes a blockthat includes Mauritania (+154%, +75%), neighbouring Mali and Senegal(+155%, +102% and +238%, +119%, respectively), Gambia (+360%, +193%)and Guinea Bissau (+385%, +126%). All those countries are currentlyin their dry season (precipitation will peak in July or August,depending on latitude) and even small precipitation amounts(typically 10 mm to 20 mm, but also close to 70 mm in Mali) willresult in large excesses. However, because of the consistent spatialpatterns, it is likely that the area is actually experiencing anearly start of the season, which mostly results in rathersatisfactory crops.

Many countries of the Arabia Peninsula recorded above averageprecipitation in the range from +59% (Kuwait) to +257% (Oman). Exceptin the UAE (+162%) and Oman, where rainfall was average during thelast quarter of 2015, the remaining countries had a secondconsecutive period of abundant rainfall by local standards, includingSaudi Arabia (+63%, +26%) , Qatar (+81%, +153%) and war-torn Yemen(+101%, +63%).

In Asia, Kyrgyzstan had one of the most anomalous precipitationamount (+63%, +170%), Followed by Mongolia (+67%, +55%), Korea DPR(+53%, +3%) and China (+55%, +85%) where semi-arid and southern areaswere affected. The areas of the Black and Caspian seas can beregarded as transitional between The Arabian Peninsula and CentralAsia with +85% (+131%) in Azerbaijan and +79% (+170%) in Armenia.

No country needs mentioning in North and Central America, but twostand out in South America:

Argentina (+50%, +24%) and Uruguay (+70%, +38%).

The only country with excess larger than 50% that still needsmentioning is Luxembourg: +57% (-23%).

C. Other agroclimatic indicators

Luxembourg also recorded below average temperature over the recordingperiod (-1.1°C),together with some other western European countries, including France(also -1.1°C),United Kingdom (-1.3°C)as well as Ireland (-1.6°C).Other areas with cold spells in include French Guiana (-2.3°C),Yemen (-1.7°C)and Eritrea (-1.1°C).

Among thecountries with large positive (>=2.0°C) temperature departures, only Turkey (+2.0°C),Lebanon (+2.6°C)and Kyrgyzstan (+2.8°C)were mentioned so far in this section. Others include Russia(+2.1°C),Moldova (+2.1°C),Uzbekistan (+2.2°C),Canada (+2.7°C)and Kazakhstan (+3.0°C).All of them are in the northern hemisphere and most cultivate wintercrops. Where warm winter weather was associated with improvedprecipitation the crop production potential has increased, by valuesthat are close to 25%, as for instance in Hungary, Russia andKyrgyzstan (+22%), Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (+27%), Romania (+28%)and Ukraine (+29%). The largest Biomass production potentialincreases (>100%) logically occurred in the semi-arid areas of thewestern Sahel and the Arabian Peninsula.

Similarly,Biomass production drops larger than 40% are associated mostly withdrops in precipitation in already identified areas, presentingaltogether rather consistent and logical patterns in SE Asia with thePhilippines -62%, Cambodia -60% and Thailand -49%, Mediterranean withCyprus (-60%), Morocco (-56%), Libya (-51%) and Lebanon (-51%),central America and the Caribbean with Panama3(-43%) and Trinidad and Tobago (-55%) andeast Africa with north Sudan (-59%).

Interestingly, RADPAR anomalies (<=-10% departure) introduce anadditional area of abnormal weather conditions with the “largerBaltic” area including Belarus (-12%), Finland and Lithuania(-11%), Poland and Latvia (-10%). The same value also occurs inLuxembourg, Switzerland and Lebanon, of which the last was alreadymentioned several times. The largest positive sunshine anomalies aremostly associated with El Niño conditions in SE Asia. They includeThailand and neighbouring Cambodia (+8%) and the Philippines and NewCaledonia (+9%).

References

Petit-Maire,N. 1992. Lire l'avenir dans les archives géologiques. Larecherche 23 (243):566-569.

Petit-Maire,N. 1999. Variabilité naturelle des environnements terrestres :les deux derniers extrêmes climatiques.CR.Acad. Sci. Paris,Sciences de la terre et des planètes, 328:273-279.

Guo, Z.T., N. Petit-Maire, and S. Kropelin, 2000: Holocenenon-orbital climatic events in present-day arid areas of NorthernAfrica and China. Global Planet. Change, 26(1-3):97-103.

1Throughout this section, the first number is the percent RAIN shortage during the current period and the second, which is usually bracketed, refers to the previous ONDJ period.

2Strictly speaking, Portugal is not a Mediterranean country.

3Panama used to part of Colombia until 1903, and is sometimes assigned to South America for historical reasons.