Modeling Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies for Crop Production in Egypt: An Overview

Abstract

Understanding the potential impacts of climate change is very important in developing adaptation strategies and actions to reduce future climate change risks. In recent years, global climate change models have been used in Egypt to develop climate change scenarios. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the importance of using global climate change models to quantify the risk of climate change on wheat and maize production in Egypt. Field experiments data from case study sites located in four geographically different Egypt Governorates and CropSyst model output are incorporated in a climate change model to assess the effect of climate change scenarios and adaptation strategies on wheat and maize production in Egypt. Results show that the yield of both crops will be reduced under future climate change scenarios. The level of yield reduction depends on geographic location, soil type, and irrigation method. The model shows higher yield loss in the Middle of Egypt as compared to the North of Egypt. Furthermore, the model predicts higher yield losses for crops grown on sandy soils and under flood irrigation. It is concluded that it is necessary to improve adaptation to present day climate variability in order to reduce vulnerability to extreme events due to future climate change.