Climate-related inter-annual variability and long-term influence on wheat yield across canal-irrigated areas of Punjab, Pakistan
2021
Akhtar, Ibrar ul Hassan | Athar, H.
The association of climatic variables and climatic oscillations with wheat yield across 26 canal command areas (CCAs) in Punjab, Pakistan, is studied, for recent 34 years (1982–2015). Climatic variables include precipitation, temperature, dry/wet spell lengths, hot/cold spell lengths, wet/dry spell ratio along with climatic oscillations, and satellite-based vegetation index for the months of January to April (Rabi season). During Rabi season, temperature increase rate was 0.14 °C decade⁻¹, whereas precipitation trends were spatially inhomogeneous and varied between – 2.7 mm decade⁻¹ and + 5.4 mm decade⁻¹. The precipitation, temperature, cold spell length, smoothed NDVI (ND), and standard deviation of ND (SDND) displayed significant correlations (0.31–0.96) with wheat yield at varying time scales. The inter-annual wheat yield variability displayed a gain of 415.7 kg ha⁻¹ under present climatic conditions for all CCAs. Worse to extreme climatic conditions based on percentiles obtained from present climate displayed a reduction of wheat yield by 252.0 to 954.9 kg ha⁻¹, respectively. The good to best climate in comparison to present climatic conditions added up 108.1 to 251.9 kg ha⁻¹, respectively. The 11-year period of 1993–2003 was the most drought prone period with consecutive five years of drought (1998–2002), having decreased precipitation, small wet/dry spell ratio and increased temperature, and long dry/hot spell length during wheat growing season. The wheat yield is predicted based on multiple regression models with sizable skill (having an explained variance of 0.79 and a root mean squared error of 121.3 kg ha⁻¹).
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