Detecting agricultural drought risks: A case study of the rice crop (Oryza sativa) and the TAMSAT‐ALERT system in Guyana

Abstract

AbstractDrought‐related risks pose a threat to the agricultural sector of Guyana despite the country's wealth of freshwater resources. As a result, the advancement of the understanding of soil moisture deficits as a means of forecasting agricultural drought is needed to aid farmers, extension officers, and other agricultural decision‐makers. Hence, this study has been motivated by the following research question: Can the Tropical Applications of Meteorology using SATellite data—AgriculturaL Early waRning sysTem (TAMSAT‐ALERT) be used to assess the meteorological risk to cultivation at key points in the growing season? Due to the absence of in situ soil moisture data for the area of study, the Joint UK Land and Environment Simulator (JULES) model was used to model the historical soil moisture, based on gauge precipitation data and NCEP reanalysis data. A case study approach during the 1997 growing seasons of the rice crop was taken to determine whether the TAMSAT‐ALERT can be used to detect drought‐related risks during the growing season of the crop. Additionally, the skill of the TAMSAT‐ALERT drought forecasting system was highly dependent on the land surface state at the initialization of the forecast period. Therefore, the meteorological conditions over the area of interest mainly precipitation in the months or weeks leading up to the initialization of the forecast will have a strong influence on the soil moisture at that period.