HR: 11:05h
AN: U32B-03    [Abstracts]
TI: Probabilistic Assessment of the Potential Impacts of Climate Variability and Change: An Illustration of Coffee Production in Veracruz.
AU: * Gay, C
EM: cgay@servidor.unam.mx
AF: Centro de Ciencias de la Atmosfera, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico., Circuito Exterior S/N, Ciudad Universitaria., Mexico, D.F 04510, Mexico
AU: Estrada, F
EM: feporrua@atmosfera.unam.mx
AF: Centro de Ciencias de la Atmosfera, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico., Circuito Exterior S/N, Ciudad Universitaria., Mexico, D.F 04510, Mexico
AU: Conde, C
EM: conde@servidor.unam.mx
AF: Centro de Ciencias de la Atmosfera, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico., Circuito Exterior S/N, Ciudad Universitaria., Mexico, D.F 04510, Mexico
AB: The assessment of the potential impacts of climate change in productive activities has been limited to particular estimations that do not consider the inherent variability and uncertainty of climatic and socioeconomic variables. This approach can only provide a limited evaluation of risk under climate change conditions since it accounts only for changes in mean conditions and therefore it evaluates the mean impact. In this work Monte Carlo methods are utilized as a mean for approximating the probability density function of coffee production in Veracruz, Mexico and of the income of the average producer under 1) different climate change scenarios which include climate variability and uncertainty in economic variables; 2) uncertainty in climate change scenarios is added by means of normal and uniform probability distributions. Results show that for year 2050, depending on the emissions scenario, coffee production could diminish between a 22 and a 55% and production variability could increase as much as 266%. When uncertainty in climate change scenarios is included, probability distributions for production and income become less informative for decision-making and imply further reductions in their expected values and increases in their variability. Nevertheless, all production and income scenarios indicate that for the average producer this activity will become no longer profitable and that potential expected losses could become almost six times larger than in present conditions.
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
SC: Union [U]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly