ICARDA Agro-Climate Tool (ICARDA_ACT)

The ICARDA-AgroClimate Tool is a Visual Basic agro-climate application developed by climatologists at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) and the US Department of Agriculture. The application’s climate database consists of weather generator parameters derived from the daily data of 649 meteorological stations in the ICARDA mandate region (Central Asia – West Asia – North Africa, a.k.a 'CWANA'). From those parameters the program calculates climate statistics over arbitrarily defined periods within summer or winter growing seasons at user-selected latitude-longitude coordinates. The statistics reported include: crop evapotranspiration estimates derived from the FAO-56 single crop coefficient algorithm, probabilities of exceedence of both cumulative rainfall and growing degree days, the probability that minimum and maximum daily temperatures will exceed user-defined temperature thresholds and the probability of heat stress, cold stress and dry periods of varying duration.

The application’s climate statistics were derived from two data sets that provide daily records of minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation. The main data source was the Global Daily Summary Data (GLDS) set, which provided data for ICARDA growing regions at 590 meteorological station locations for the period October 1977 to December 1991. The secondary data source was the Global Daily Climatology Network data (GDCN), which provided records of primary daily variables at 59 additional locations for variable durations.

The software and a full technical description of the software’s capabilities can be downloaded from the relevant USDA ARS Cropping Systems Research Laboratory website.