Project

AgMIP

AgMIP - The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project

Research introduction

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) is a major international collaborative effort to assess the state of global agricultural modeling and to understand climate impacts on the agricultural sector.

Research challenges

The objective of this research is to substantially improve the characterization of world food security as affected by climate variability and change, and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries. The project has the following goals:

  1. Intercomparison of multiple crop models to investigate their variability (uncertainty) of response to climate factors of temperature, CO2, and rainfall, as well as management inputs;
  2. Testing multiple crop models against observed response data on temperature, CO2, water availability, and management inputs;
  3. Improving code and relationships of crop models at process-level to give more accurate responses to climatic, management, and genetic factors;
  4. Developing methodologies for simulating climate impacts on agriculture for regions with low soil fertility, inputs, and water availability;
  5. Applying crop models to evaluate adaptations to minimize impacts and take advantage of climate change scenarios.

The study hopes to yield the following results:

  • The uncertainty of crop yield projections is reduced by improved temperature response (Nature Plants, 2017)
  • Similar estimates of temperature impacts on global wheat yield by three independent methods (Nature Climate Change, 2016)
  • Rising temperatures reduce global wheat production (Nature Climate Change, 2015)
  • Uncertainty in simulating wheat yields under climate change (Nature Climate Change, 2013)