translated from Spanish: Costs of climate change in the region Tierra Caliente

Morelia, Michoacán – in an article published in Conacyt and written by Paloma Carreño Acuñareported that seasonal agriculture is an activity vulnerable to the effects of climate change, because that depends directly on the meteorological conditions, hence the need to measure the agricultural vulnerability in the region Tierra Caliente, Michoacán. 
Dr. Alba María Ortega Gómez, posdoctoranda in the Center for research in environmental geography, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma of Mexico (UNAM), campus Morelia, has developed over the years of socio-economic and agricultural vulnerability indices the effects of climate change, applying methodologies which consider climatic, social and economic variables. 
Your area of study is the region Tierra Caliente of Michoacán (RTC), comprised of the municipalities of Carácuaro, Huetamo, Nocupétaro, Madero, Tacámbaro, San Lucas and Turicato. 
The surface of the region Tierra Caliente is seven thousand 341.3 km2 and represents 12.5 per cent of Michoacán. Presents a rugged terrain, it has valleys and Plains that allow you to have soils suitable for agricultural activities. The use of soil in the region is predominantly agricultural (20.1 per cent of the surface), followed by the surface of tropical deciduous forest (15.6 per cent), grasslands (15.1 per cent) and pine forest, oak and mixed (13.2 per cent). The area dedicated to agriculture in the region is of 147 hectares, 18.3 per cent account with irrigation, 45 are fertilized, 29 per cent applies improved seed, 14 percent receiving technical assistance, and 32 per cent has mechanization, according to data from the Census agricultural, livestock and forestry (2007).
climate change on the region land hot
as defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change (IPCC), climate change refers to the attributed climate change directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere and which adds to the natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. Ortega Gómez notes that one of the most serious effects of this phenomenon occurs in agricultural systems, since they depend on 47 per cent of the world’s population for their livelihood. 
Agricultural land, 18 per cent dependent on irrigation systems, according to data from the United Nations Organization for food and Agriculture (FAO, for its acronym in English), which produces about half of the World cereals. In addition, about 80 per cent of agricultural land depends on rainfall. So, says, the changes in the patterns of temperature and precipitation impact directly on the quantity and quality of crops. 
“Climate change is estimated that it will have effects on the global economy; in the best-case scenario, the economics of climate change poses a loss equivalent to four percent of world GDP”, says Dr. Carlos Francisco Ortiz Paniagua, who leads this research project. 
With their studies, they generated a model of economic costs which allowed them to estimate and project the economic losses for the agricultural production of temporal to the year 2025, focusing its research in the Tierra Caliente region. 
“The results projected a loss attributable to climate change of 530 million pesos for the next 10 years. Huetamo is the municipality with greater economic losses projected, while Madero and Tacámbaro are which presented higher increase in temperature based on climate change scenarios, “says Ortega Gómez. 
But the costs are not only economic, mentions that also generates social threats that can not be evaded. It mentions that it has been found that climate change may increase poverty by decreasing the production of basic grains, among others.
measure
vulnerability vulnerability is the set of physical, social and economic conditions that affect the possibility of involvement of the people, of a system of social or natural, due to the occurrence of natural phenomena, and that they are in relation to their exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, elements which together determine the degree of vulnerability of the population and ecosystems. 
The researcher pointed out that it was first necessary to detect the signal of climate change, for which used click-MD software based on a widely used climate data analysis system for the regional and local monitoring of the climate change, developed by Baptist and collaborators at the UNAM CIGA. The results showed an increase in maximum temperatures and a decrease in the minimum, which means that it is increasing the thermal amplitude (the difference between one and the other). 
Later, used the methodology of the economics of climate change developed by the IPCC to generate projections on what would happen if the temperature will increase a certain number of degrees and the effects it would have on the agricultural production of temporary. 
“The reason is that there is a direct relationship between temperature rise and agricultural yields. For example, there is the case of the maize, for each degree increase in temperature, performance decreases five per cent”.  
For the first variable was designed an index of agricultural economic vulnerability, which employed 21 indicators. They determined that regional climate change is a major threat and checked through the analysis of temperature and precipitation under climate change scenarios, where studied more than 20 meteorological stations. 
“The results showed the agricultural economic risk for the municipalities to the interior of the region and this will experience increases in the maximum temperature 0.4 ° c and 3.1 ° c and minimum temperatures of 0.4 ° C and 2.4 ° C. Precipitation shows signs of a reduction in the revised periods, so it is expected a tendency to a reduction of between 10 per cent and 20 per cent, which monitors the signal of climate change in the region,”says Dr. Ortiz Paniagua. 
Ortega Gómez has developed regional climate change scenarios, using the stochastic generator of LARS-WG climate v. 5.0 developed by Semenov and Stratonovitch. LARS-WG allowed him to generate series of daily data of temperature and precipitation for the time horizons 2025, 2050 and 2075, under the scenarios A2 and A1B developed by the IPCC based on trends of future emissions of GHG (greenhouse) . 
In 2014, the IPCC noted that most prone regions undergo climate changes (increases in temperature and decrease in precipitation), in the case of the Mexican dry tropics would be the area of Tierra Caliente in Michoacan and Guerrero. 
“During the period of 2003-2015, regional seasonal agriculture has suffered a loss for claims equivalent to 21 percent of the total value of production, as a result of drought and rainfall mainly”, mentioned Dr. quoting as source data from the SIAP-Sagarpa. 
In addition to his research work, Ortega Gómez is part of the select group of activists from The Climate Reality Project organization, founded in 2005 by Al Gore, VicePresident of the United States. The Climate Reality Project is a non-profit dedicated to the climate crisis through training of young interested in raising awareness and influencing the citizenship on the climate crisis that we live in today, through leadership actions.   
Ortega Gómez says that, given the conditions of variability and climate change, the global challenge consists in designing and implementing public policies and strategies of prevention and adaptation to the effects of climate change so that they reduce the Economic and productive, loss of heritage and externalities; and locally, for the specific case of the farmers, it will be necessary that implement models of sustainable agriculture adapted to changing climate conditions. 
Source: Conacyt
 

Original source in Spanish