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Assessment of the impacts of climate change on agro-climatic indices in Iran

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Abstract

Countries located in arid and semi-arid regions of the world, such as Iran, with highly dependent economy to agriculture, are more vulnerable to climate change. Six agro-climatic indices have been used, which include the length of the growing season and the frost-free season, dates of the occurrence of the last frost in spring and the first frost in autumn, and annual sum of the growing degree-days (GDD) for two temperature thresholds. To explore variabilities of the indices in the future, outputs of three regional climate models (RCMs) have been analyzed based on two Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) scenarios for the South Asia CORDEX region, with the horizontal resolution of 0.44°. Differences between the historical and future simulated agro-climatic indices have been calculated, in which the former is obtained from historical outputs of three models for the period 1961–1990, while the latter is based on future simulations during the period 2061–2090 applying RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. Both RCP scenarios indicate an increase in the number of frost-free days (maximum 40 and 70 frost-free days according to the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively), with higher changes in mountainous regions. Our results indicate that shorter frost days will be more common in northwestern and western Iran in the future period. The highest increase in annual sum of the GDD will be in southern and central Iran, but the lowest increase will be in northwestern Iran.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Iran Meteorological Organization, Isfahan Meteorological Bureau, Isfahan, Iran

    Asghar Kamyar

  2. Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences and Planning, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, 8174673441, Iran

    Hojjatollah Yazdanpanah & Saeed Movahedi

  3. Department of Geography and Tourism Studies, Brock University, No. 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, L2S 3A1, Canada

    David Morimoto

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  1. Asghar Kamyar
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  2. Hojjatollah Yazdanpanah
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  3. Saeed Movahedi
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  4. David Morimoto
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Correspondence to Asghar Kamyar.

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Kamyar, A., Yazdanpanah, H., Movahedi, S. et al. Assessment of the impacts of climate change on agro-climatic indices in Iran. Theor Appl Climatol 142, 1359–1367 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03385-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03385-z

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