Within the DWD’s activities, the development of precautionary measures to avoid weather-related disasters and to provide support for disaster risk reduction plays an increasing role. With respect to the agricultural sector, there is a growing demand amongst farmers and policy makers for robust service products covering agrometeorological factors at relevant spatial and temporal scales.

By deploying state-of-the-art impact models (which are part of the so-called “AMBER” software package), the DWD provides operational agrometeorological services to farmers’ organizations and their members as well as policy makers in Germany. This DWD-AMBER software can be used to analyse the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector.

So far, the calculation schemes are based on historical and actual station data, numerical weather forecasts, and plant and soil information from in-situ observations. Within this FPCUP action, the DWD-AMBER software will be extended to Copernicus-UERRA/CERRA reanalysis data to enable spatially high-resolution, agrometeorological modelling for various crops in Central Europe.

By comparing current weather conditions to the WMO standard reference period of 1961 to 1990, extreme events and long-term changes in the crop micro-climate and soil moisture can be detected. This information is crucial to develop adaptation strategies for a sustainable agriculture in a warming Central Europe.

Output and results

• Adaptation of the agrometeorological model package DWD-AMBER to using Copernicus UERRA/CERRA reanalysis data
• Compilation of AMBER-UERRA products for regional to Europe-wide horizontal scales, monthly to decadal time scales, and various crop types
• The new products will include maps of Central Europe of the normals and anomalies calculated for agricultural climate indices such as soil moisture in different depth
• The AMBER-UERRA products will be provided in a web portal easily accessible for users