Climate Change Will Increase the Need for Climate Services to Inform Decision-Making

Based on six international datasets, 2024 was confirmed by the WMO as the warmest year on record. The global average surface temperature reached 1.55°C above the 1850-1900 average. The decade from 2015 to 2024 was the warmest on record, and climatic extremes are becoming more frequent and intense. There has never been a greater demand for climate services to guide decision-making.

Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, with significant impacts on agriculture. These events can cause extensive crop damage or total crop failure, disrupt agricultural infrastructure, and escalate production costs, posing challenges to food security and economic stability in the agricultural sector.

Climate services (CS) play a crucial role in supporting agricultural adaptation to climate variability and change by providing actionable climate information to farmers and institutions for better planning and adaptation strategies, generating tailored, localized climate insights relevant to specific agricultural activities and creating conditions that promote the adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture practices, which integrate sustainable agriculture, resilience building, and reduced environmental impact (Hansen et al., 2019; Born, 2021).

In this context, MAGDA project contributes to support adaptation of agriculture sector to climate change by developing a toolchain for atmosphere monitoring, weather forecasting, and severe weather/irrigation/crop monitoring advisory, with GNSS (including Galileo) at its core, to provide useful information to agricultural operators. Specifically, MAGDA deals with the assimilation of different satellite-borne, drone-borne, ground based weather radar, and in-situ weather observations into very high-resolution numerical weather prediction models, and with the delivery of meteorological products for severe weather warnings and advisories to farmers by a dedicated dashboard.