Understanding the local impact of climate change on agriculture is essential for decision-makers and smallholders to adopt appropriate adaptation measures.

The climate component of MOSAICC includes tools that make local climate projections of different agro-climatic variables:

• Minimum and maximum temperatures
• Precipitation
• Reference evapotranspiration
• Growing season onset and length of the growing season

The aim is to use these outputs as input in the other MOSAICC models to make projections of crop yields, water resources and forest dynamics.

Statistical downscaling and spatial interpolation tools 

A statistical downscaling tool uses data from global climate models to make predictions at a local scale and the results are presented in various temporal resolutions: daily, the dekadal (ten days), monthly and annually.

The climate component also includes the AURELHY method ("Analysis Using the Relief for Hydrometeorology) to interpolate station-level climate data in the study domain. AURELHY is a spatial interpolation algorithm for meteorological and hydrological data, based on the analysis of the topography. A specific utility was developed to directly calculate the reference evapotranspiration from interpolated minimum and maximum temperatures.

Finally, the climate component comprises a tool to estimate the onset of the growing season and the length of the growth cycle.