Evaluating Weather and Climate Impacts on Global Crop Production

As part of Thomson Reuters, our Agriculture & Weather Research and Forecasting group has developed methodologies to provide customers with the most up-to-date impacts on agricultural crop production due to weather and climate extremes, in order to best manage risk. This is visualized most predominantly on our Agriculture Weather Dashboard, where diagnostics and predictions of weather and climate extremes are linked back directly to risk management in the commodities market. Combining short-term and long-term weather reviews and forecasts created by meteorologists and climatologists with a supported background in agriculture, our goal is to provide customers with as much knowledge of the short-term forecast, involved uncertainties related to climate indicators, and potential impacts and risks to crop production as quickly as possible. Our recent addition of long-term ENSO forecasting, which uses statistical regression modeling of current and future short-term and long-term climate indicators has provided us with the knowledge to not only advise customers of expected impacts to crops not even in the ground yet (e.g. 2015/16 South American crops), but also inform our own crop production estimates which cover 5 continents. Whether providing insight and coverage on a fast-moving anomalous weather event (e.g. a sudden heat wave), or a slow-moving global climate teleconnection or event (such as building drought), our group has developed the tools to support individuals and groups who are interested in and rely on variance in global agricultural crop production.