Rainfall seasonality and timing: implications for cereal crop production in Ethiopia

Détails

Ressource 1Télécharger: Mosisa 2021.pdf (12776.96 [Ko])
Etat: Public
Version: Final published version
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
ID Serval
serval:BIB_559ECC4EDB1F
Type
Article: article d'un périodique ou d'un magazine.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Titre
Rainfall seasonality and timing: implications for cereal crop production in Ethiopia
Périodique
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
Auteur⸱e⸱s
Wakjira Mosisa Tujuba, Peleg Nadav, Anghileri Daniela, Molnar Darcy, Alamirew Tena, Six Johan, Molnar Peter
ISSN
0168-1923
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
11/2021
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
310
Pages
108633
Langue
anglais
Résumé
Rainfall seasonality and timing are key climatic features affecting crop yield in rainfed agriculture (RFA). We evaluated the dynamics of temporal rainfall attributes – the strength of seasonality, the date of onset, cessation, and duration of the rainy season – over RFA areas across Ethiopia for the period 1981-2010 and explored their impacts on cereal crop production (including maize, teff, sorghum, wheat, barley, millet, oats and rice) between 1995 and 2010. First, we quantified the rainfall seasonality using an entropy-based seasonality index, defined the onset and cessation dates of rainy seasons, computed the rainy season duration, and analyzed their interannual variability and trends. Second, we correlated de-trended total cereal production during the Meher (i.e., long rainy) season (April to September) with the anomalies of the temporal rainfall attributes, and we used a univariate linear regression model to estimate the influence of changes in these attributes on crop production. We show that RFA areas in northern Ethiopia are characterized by a highly seasonal and unimodal rainfall regime. The southern parts of the RFA areas are characterized by less seasonal rainfall of bimodal and erratic nature. Cereal crop production during the Meher season, especially in teff and maize-dominated regions, is found to be correlated to both the onset (median ρ=-0.32 and -0.37, respectively) and duration (ρ=0.34 and 0.19) of the rainy season in the unimodal rainfall regime, whereas it is correlated with the rainfall seasonality (ρ=0.21) in regions with a bimodal rainfall. We estimate that on average over RFA areas, a late-onset and shorter rainy season lead to ∼1.5% and 1.1% crop production losses per pentad (5-day period), respectively.
Mots-clé
Rainfall seasonality, Rainy season onset, Rainy season duration, Rainfed agriculture, Cereal crop production, Ethiopia
Création de la notice
08/09/2021 15:07
Dernière modification de la notice
21/11/2022 8:20
Données d'usage