AgMIP (The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project) East Asia Regional Workshop:

The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) (http://www.agmip.org/) is a major international effort linking the climate, crop, and economic modeling communities with cutting-edge information technology to produce improved crop and economic models and the next generation of climate impact projections for the agricultural sector. The goals of AgMIP are to improve substantially the characterization of world food security due to climate change and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries. Analyses of the agricultural impacts of climate variability and change require a transdisciplinary effort to consistently link state-of-the-art climate scenarios to crop and economic models. Crop model outputs are aggregated as inputs to regional and global economic models to determine regional vulnerabilities, changes in comparative advantage, price effects, and potential adaptation strategies in the agricultural sector. Climate, crop model, economics, and information technology protocols are presented to guide coordinated AgMIP research activities around the world, along with cross-cutting themes that address aggregation, uncertainty, and the development of Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs) to enable testing of climate change adaptations in the context of other global trends. The organization of research activities by geographic region and specific crops is described, along with project milestones. The worldwide agricultural sector faces the significant challenge of increasing production to provide food security for a population projected to rise to 9 billion by mid-century while protecting the environment and the functioning of ecosystems. This challenge is compounded by the need to adapt to climate change by taking advantage of potential benefits and by minimizing the potentially negative impacts to agricultural production. The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) seeks to improve substantially the characterization of world food security under climate change and to enhance adaptation capacity in both developing and developed countries. AgMIP Regions are geographical areas in which collaborative efforts are created to implement the protocols and provide outputs for use in the region and for use in global studies. AgMIP regional activities are underway in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. AgMIP is holding recurring regional workshops to bring together climate scientists, agronomists, and economists from leading regional and international institutions to build capacity and conduct simulations and analyses at field-to-regional scales according to the AgMIP protocols. Participation from scientists in important agricultural regions is crucial to AgMIP goals, as local expertise is vital to establishing grounded simulations for regional agriculture. This workshop is to kickoff AgMIP regional activities in East Asia.