13,849 research outputs found
THE USE OF CLIMATE FORECASTS IN AGRICULTURE: EXPERIENCE IN THE AMERICAS
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Access and use of weather and climate information by women and men farmers: Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture qualitative evaluation preliminary findings
The Rwanda Climate Services for Agriculture project has sought to build capacity of the countryās national institutions to provide climate information tailored to the needs of the agriculture sector, deliver climate services to farmers across Rwandaās 30 districts, and help them to effectively use the information to manage climate risk. Project interventions include: training Farmer Promoters,
who are part of Rwandaās national agricultural extension service, to guide farmers in the Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) process (Dorward et al., 2015); and organizing farmers into Radio Listenersā Clubs that meet weekly to participate in climate services radio programs and discuss management responses
CHINA'S AGRICULTURAL WATER SCARCITY : EFFECTS ON INTERNATIONAL MARKETS
Water shortages in important grain-producing regions of China may significantly affect China's agricultural production potential and international markets. This paper provides an overview of how water scarcity could affect China's agricultural production and trade. The paper identifies the areas where available water resources are most overexploited and the crops most vulnerable to reductions in irrigation. We present preliminary results from modeling a decline in irrigated land in water scarce areas in China and the effect this would have on China's production and trade. Wheat and cotton are most vulnerable to a decrease in irrigated area in water scarce regions, and production for these crops could fall by 7-10 percent under a severe cutback in irrigation. The effect this will have on international markets will depend largely on the openness of China's border to imports. In addition, we describe recent conservation policies and how these may affect crop production in China.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Interactions between Resource Scarcity and Trade Policy: The Potential Effects of Water Scarcity on Chinaās Agricultural Economy under the Current TRQ Regime
International Relations/Trade, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
Estimating distributions of treatment effects with an application to the returns to schooling and measurement of the effects of uncertainty on college choice
This paper uses factor models to identify and estimate distributions of counterfactuals. We extend LISREL frameworks to a dynamic treatment effect setting, extending matching to account for unobserved conditioning variables. Using these models, we can identify all pairwise and joint treatment effects. We apply these methods to a model of schooling and determine the intrinsic uncertainty facing agents at the time they make their decisions about enrollment in school. Reducing uncertainty in returns raises college enrollment. We go beyond the āVeil of ignoranceā in evaluating educational policies and determine who benefits and loses from commonly proposed educational reforms.Factor models; model of schooling; distributions of counterfactual outcomes
Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications
Improving observations of ocean heat content show that Earth is absorbing
more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the
recent solar minimum. The inferred planetary energy imbalance, 0.59 \pm 0.15
W/m2 during the 6-year period 2005-2010, confirms the dominant role of the
human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change. Observed surface
temperature change and ocean heat gain together constrain the net climate
forcing and ocean mixing rates. We conclude that most climate models mix heat
too efficiently into the deep ocean and as a result underestimate the negative
forcing by human-made aerosols. Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be
1.6 \pm 0.3 W/m2, implying substantial aerosol indirect climate forcing via
cloud changes. Continued failure to quantify the specific origins of this large
forcing is untenable, as knowledge of changing aerosol effects is needed to
understand future climate change. We conclude that recent slowdown of ocean
heat uptake was caused by a delayed rebound effect from Mount Pinatubo aerosols
and a deep prolonged solar minimum. Observed sea level rise during the Argo
float era is readily accounted for by ice melt and ocean thermal expansion, but
the ascendency of ice melt leads us to anticipate acceleration of the rate of
sea level rise this decade.Comment: 39 pages, 18 figures; revised version submitted to Atmos. Chem. Phy
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