Jonathan Winter

Predicting the Impacts of Climate Change on Central American Agriculture: 
Preliminary Regional Climate Modeling Results 

 
Agriculture is a vital component of Central America's economy.  Poor crop yields 
and harvest reliability can produce food insecurity, malnutrition, and conflict. 
Regional climate models (RCMs) and agricultural models have the potential to 
greatly enhance the efficiency of Central American agriculture and water resources 
management under both current and future climates. 
 
A series of numerical experiments was conducted to evaluate the ability of Regional 
Climate Model Version 3 (RegCM3) to reproduce the current climate of Central 
America and assess changes in temperature and precipitation under a future climate 
scenario.  Control simulations are being compared to a variety of observational 
datasets, including local weather station data, gridded meteorological data, and 
high-resolution satellite-based precipitation products.  Future climate simulations 
are being analyzed for both mean shifts in climate and changes in climate variability, 
including extreme events (droughts, heatwaves, floods). 
 
The overall framework for creating climate change impacts predictions for Central 
American agriculture that account for evolving distributions of precipitation and 
temperature extremes will be presented.  Initial analyses of current and future 
climate simulations will be discussed, with a focus on four pilot locations within 
Central America.