Impact of Climate Change on Crop Water Requirement: A Case Study of Amreli District

Abstract

Climate can be demarcated as the weather condition, which has been measured over a long period of time. Climate change studies reveal that it will affect the water requirement of different crops. Consider this as a major effect on agriculture, a study was taken to know the climate change impact on the water requirement of crops cultivated in the area of Amreli district, Gujarat. For this study, meteorological data (maximum temperature, minimum temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, wind velocity, and solar radiation) of periods 2001–2020 are used. Future meteorological parameters were predicted for the period of 2031–2090 using a ClimGen weather generator. Results of generated future climatological data are showing increasing and decreasing trend, but overall climatic data shows increasing trend for the future years till 2090. These results show that climatological parameters are changing in upcoming years. Crop evapotranspiration (ETc) was determined with the help of CROPWAT 8.0 using daily climatological parameters for generated weather data, and then, the water requirement of different crops was determined. The clear effect of climatological parameters on the water requirement crops of Rabi and Kharif was identified in results. To meet the increasing demand of water, water resources should be increased by increase in water level and doing water conservation efficiently. Farmers should also be motivated to use different methods for irrigation as sprinkler and drip irrigation systems according to the requirement of crops instead of using flooding methods.