Climate change impacts on droughts

This Technical Report was developed in the framework of Component 3 of the second phase of the Programme EUROCLIMA: “Sustainable Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change in Latin America: Strengthening the capacities of key stakeholders to adapt agriculture to climate change and mitigate its effects”. EUROCLIMA is a regional cooperation program between the European Union and Latin America aiming at facilitating the integration of mitigation and adaptation strategies into climate change public policies and development plans in Latin America. In the framework of EUROCLIMA, EU development assistance funding has been provided through the Commission’s Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development (AA JRC No. 2013/332-909) to work on the topics of Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD), as well as on bio-physical modelling for crop yield estimation in Latin America. This study makes use of the most current General Circulation Models (GCMs) forced with CMIP5 climate projections to quantify the projected changes in intra-annual drought characteristics for South–Central America during the next century at a fine gridded scale. Since the analysis is based on GCMs and South–Central America region is part of the integrated framework that contributes to the global conditions used to stimulate the various climate projections, we decided also to conduct our analysis from a global to a continental perspective (in order to place South–Central America in the globe).