Automatic Weather Stations enabled with Wi-Fi, give continuous information on the weather. In remote areas where the Wi-Fi facility is not available the information could be stored on the SD cards and sent to the nearby centres for processing and sharing.
The farmers by understanding, especially the temperature and relative humidity could manage their crops better. Especially the extremes and variability of weather parameters are most important to the farmers. For scientists and policy makers the climate change modelling is more important rather for a farmer.
The evapo-transpiration rate is a very good indicator for irrigation planning and understanding the sustainability of biomass. Based on the live data and projections the possibility of drought in an area can be predicted.
The farmers could better manage their crops and do irrigation scheduling and achieve water use efficiency.
With the availability of the local weather data, they could go for the index based insurance from the Government and other agencies.
Climate Change
Climate change is having a profound effect on the environment, especially on the quality and availability of water resources. It will have significant impact on agriculture, which is a climate sensitive sector. One of the main concerns in agriculture is the reliability and quality of water supplies owing to erratic rainfall, climate variability, extreme weather events and rising temperatures, which increases evaporation. Erratic distribution or shortfall in water supply will increase water scarcity and enhance competition for water use for a wide range of economic, social and environmental applications. Therefore, farmers, researchers and policy makers are increasingly concerned about the potential impacts of climate change on food security.
The diverse nature of the policies and the varied impacts of climate across ecosystems and sectors have necessitated devising specific strategies. institutional capacity thereof for developing and implementing adaptation plans. One aspect that needs attention in this context is water use efficiency (WUE):
The scientific community is using various climate and hydrology models for assessing impacts of climate change on water and identifying adaptation strategies for increasing WUE. Some important adaptation strategies include climate smart farming technologies, alternative cropping systems, aligning cropping patterns with natural resource endowments, micro irrigation and evaporation-transpiration reduction. For example in paddy cultivation the practices adopted are System of Rice Intensification, Alternate Wetting and Drying, Direct seeding of rice, and Machine transplantation. And a number of initiatives for were being implemented to develop adaptation framework for Water and Agriculture sectors.