Validation of medium range weather forecasts and its economic impact on cotton-wheat cropping system in South-Western Punjab

Abstract

The value-added medium range weather forecast, received from Meteorological Centre, Chandigarh was validated using actual data taken from Agro-meteorological observatories of Bathinda and Faridkot, districts of Punjab during 2013-14 to 2017-18. Moreover, to study the economic impact of the forecast, field experiments were conducted during Rabi 2016-17 on wheat and Kharif 2017 on cotton having two sowing time and two management levels as adoption and non-adoption of agromet advisory services with four replications. Result revealed that, among the years and seasons, maximum accuracy was found with rainfall forecast, while, least correctness of the forecast was observed with wind speed. Except temperature, higher accuracy was observed during pre-monsoon season for all weather parameters. Alternatively, seasonal usability of forecast of rainfall, cloud cover, Tmax, Tmin and wind speed were found success ranged from 87-98%, 65-75%, 51-72%, 56-67% and44-83%, while, early usability was ranged 93-96%, 63-73%, 45-70%, 56-70% and 35-87%, respectively among study locations. Moreover, among study locations, the whole year RMSE was observed in the range from 3.95-5.12 mm, 2.71-2.80 Okta, 2.83-2.85 °C, 2.39-2.51 °C and 5.79-7.47 kmph, while, the value of correlation coefficient ranged from 0.68-0.83, 0.39-0.44, 0.92-0.93, 0.95-0.96 and 0.35-0.43 in respect of rainfall, cloud cover, maximum temperature, minimum temperature and wind speed, respectively. Moreover, adopted agro-meteorological advisory services (AAS) was found valuable, in which, better yield and its attributes were observed over non-adopted AAS for both the crops and study locations. Furthermore, an additional net return of Rs. 4055 and Rs. 1900 per acre for cotton, while, Rs. 5461 and Rs. 5045 per acre for wheat crop were obtained with the use of adopted AAS for timely and late sown conditions, respectively. On the other hand, adopted AAS showed 17 % and 21 % higher net profit for cotton and 26 % and 18 % higher net profit for wheat with timely and late sown crop, respectively.