Modelling yield and yield loss distribution on European scale

Climate change may have significant consequences for crop growth and yield. Under normal conditions, these are largely determined by weather during the growing season and even with minor deviations from the normal weather, management practices and yield are seriously threaded. Accordingly, also the expected increase of extreme events such as prolonged drought periods or heat waves should be carefully taken into account due to their effect on yield quality and quantity. Generally the climate-risk in agriculture has been evaluated, at different scale, by characterizing the shape of crop yield distribution. Yield distribution has in fact important implications for modelling crop insurance programs, production decisions under uncertainty, and risk-efficient farm planning and climate change is expected to alter the present trend. Additionally, yield loss distribution, due to extreme events, has not yet been characterised. On these bases, a framework is presented to assess climate change impact on yield and yield loss distributions on European scale, which represents a basis to test adaptation options in agriculture. As a first step of this framework, the yield probability density function (PDF) of different crops were calculated for the present period at European scale.