Andrea Toreti

European Commission | ec · Joint Research Centre (JRC)

In recent years, droughts have had substantial impacts on nearly all regions of the EU, affecting several critical systems such as agriculture, water supply, energy, river transportation, and ecosystems. These impacts are projected to further increase due to climate change. While some of the drivers of drought risk are well known for some systems a...

Precipitation seasonality is the main factor controlling vegetation phenology in many tropical and subtropical regions. Anticipating the rain onset is of paramount importance for field preparation and seeding. This is of particular importance in various African countries that rely on agriculture as a main source of food, subsistence and income. In...

Droughts and heatwaves are among the most impactful climate extremes. Their co-occurrence can have adverse consequences on natural and human systems. Early information on their possible occurrence on seasonal timescales is beneficial for many stakeholders. Seasonal climate forecasts have become openly available to the community, but a wider use is...

Earth observations (EO) have successfully been used to train artificial intelligence (AI)-based models in the field of disaster risk reduction (DRR) contributing to tools such as disaster early warning systems. Given the number of in situ and remote (e.g., radiosonde/satellite) monitoring devices, there is a common perception that there are no limi...

In the last few years, the world has experienced numerous extreme droughts with adverse direct, cascading, and systemic impacts. Despite more frequent and severe events, drought risk assessment is still incipient compared to that of other meteorological and climate hazards. This is mainly due to the complexity of drought, the high level of uncertai...

Gridded observational products of the main climate parameters are essential in climate science. Current interpolation approaches, implemented to derive such products, often lack of a proper uncertainty propagation and representation. In this study, we introduce a Bayesian spatiotemporal approach based on the integrated nested Laplace approximation...

The Anomaly hotSpots of Agricultural Production (ASAP) Decision Support System was launched operationally in 2017 for providing timely early warning information on agricultural production based on Earth Observation and agro-climatic data in an open and easy to use online platform. Over the last three years, the system has seen several methodologica...

This chapter provides some insights on how climate change can affect agricultural commodity markets in the medium to long term. It includes some methodological aspects on how different quantitative tools, ranging from earth system models to farm-level production decisions, can be combined in the analysis of climate change impacts on agricultural ma...

The joint probability of precipitation and soil moisture is here investigated over Europe with the goal to extrapolated meaningful insights on the potential joint use of these variables for the detection of agricultural droughts within a probabilistic modeling framework. The use of copulas is explored as a parametric approach often used in hydrolog...

In recent years, research on drought risk has expanded to include multiple types of drought hazards, various exposed elements and a multitude of factors that determine the vulnerability of a given system or sector. This has resulted in a call from the scientific community to adopt a systemic risk perspective on drought. However, a thorough understa...

The impacts of drought events can be diverse, far-reaching and encompass multiple sectors and systems. This became particularly evident in recent droughts in Europe (e.g. 2018 and 2022), when, together with extensive damages to agriculture across the whole continent, severe impacts on public water supply, energy production and riverine transportati...

Drought affects almost every aspect of the environment and society. However, specific sectoral drought impact and risk assessments are often excluded from loss estimates because they are difficult to quantify and/or model. Effectively assessing and managing drought risk requires a multi-scale and multi-sectoral approach to understand the different...

Droughts evolve in space and time without following borders or pre-determined temporal constraints. Here, we present a new database of drought events built with a three-dimensional density-based clustering algorithm. The chosen approach is able to identify and characterize the spatio-temporal evolution of drought events, and it was tuned with a sup...

Droughts and heatwaves are among the most impactful climate extremes. Their co-occurrence can have devastating consequences on natural and human systems. Early information on seasonal timescales on their possible occurrence is beneficial for many stakeholders. Seasonal climate forecast has gradually become more used; but limited skill in certain re...

The current drought conditions across the Parana-La Plata Basin (LPB) in Brazil-Argentina have been the worst since 1944. While this area is characterized by a rainy season with a peak from October to April, the hydrological year 2020-2021 was very deficient in rainfall, and the situation extended into the 2021-2022 hydrological year. Below-normal...

Drought events evolve simultaneously in space and time; hence, a proper characterization of an event requires the tracking of its full spatio-temporal evolution. Here we present a generalized algorithm for the tracking of drought events based on a three-dimensional application of the DBSCAN (Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noi...

Warming trends are responsible for an observed decrease of water discharge in southern France (northwestern Mediterranean). Ongoing climate change and the likely increase of water demand threaten the availability of water resources over the coming decades. Drought indices like the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) are increasingly used in climate...

Building a resilient and sustainable agricultural sector requires the development and implementation of tailored climate change adaptation strategies. By focusing on durum wheat (Triticum turgidum subsp. durum) in the Euro-Mediterranean region, we estimate the benefits of adapting through seasonal cultivar-selection supported by an idealised agro-c...

Droughts evolve in space and time without following borders or pre-determined temporal constraints. Here, we present a new database of drought events built with a three-dimensional density-based clustering algorithm. The chosen approach is able to track the spatio-temporal evolution of an event, and it was tuned against a set of past global drought...

This study analyses the relationship between satellite-measured fAPAR (Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation), which are continuously monitored by the European Drought Observatory (EDO) of the EU’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service, and crop yield data for cereals, which are collected by Eurostat. Different features of the...

Una sequía extrema y persistente que comenzó en 2019 todavía hoy sigue afectando a la Cuenca del Plata, la segunda cuenca hidrográfica más grande de Sudamérica y la quinta del mundo. En el presente informe se ofrece una visión general del episodio, su contexto climatológico, su evolución espaciotemporal, sus causas y características y sus impactos...

Uma seca persistente e extrema iniciada em 2019 está ainda em curso e tem vindo a afetar a bacia de La Plata, a segunda maior bacia hidrográfica da América do Sul e a quinta maior do mundo. Apresentamos aqui uma panorâmica do evento, do seu contexto climatológico, da sua evolução espaciotemporal, das suas causas e características, bem como dos seus...

Meteorological observations from ground weather stations are of upmost importance to implement and run sectoral climate services and to perform scientific activities, such as models’ evaluation and data assimilation. However, meteorological observations may be affected by errors deteriorating the quality and the reliability of the products based on...

Warming trends are responsible for an observed decrease of water discharge in Southern France (northwestern Mediterranean). Ongoing climate change and the likely increase of water demand threaten the availability of water resources over the coming decades. Drought indices like the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) are increasingly used in climate...

The risk of food-supply instability is expected to increase along with the frequency and intensity of extreme agro-climatic events in many regions. Assessing the sensitivity of the global agricultural system to evolving extremes requires the probability of occurrence of such events to be estimated and their links with potential food supply and dema...

Until now, proxy records have been the primary tool for quantitative reconstructions of the physical world of the ancient and late antique Mediterranean. This chapter demonstrates the combined use of proxy datasets and the hitherto underutilized potential of earth system models in the scientific and historical study of past environmental variations...

It is a good practice to follow common guidelines in the computation of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) datasets as part of operational drought monitoring systems. In the European Drought Observatory (EDO, https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) reference statistics are computed following the WMO Guidelines on the Calculation of Climate Normals, wher...

A persistent and extreme drought started in 2019 is still ongoing and has been affecting the La Plata Basin, the second largest river basin in South America and the fifth in the world. Here we provide an overview of the event, its climatological background, its spatio-temporal evolution, its causes and characteristics, as well as its impacts on nat...

Background: Psychiatric disorders constitute a major public health concern that are associated with substantial health and socioeconomic burden. Psychiatric patients may be more vulnerable to high temperatures, which under current climate change projections will most likely increase the burden of this public health concern. Objective: This study...

Climate change is affecting natural ecosystems and society. Anticipating its impacts on vegetation resilience is critical to estimate the ecosystems’ response to global changes and the reliability of the related ecosystem services, to support mitigation actions, and to define proper adaptation plans. Here, we compute the Annual Production Resil...

Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is a minor cereal crop of key importance for making pasta, couscous, burghul, puddings, bread and many other traditional foods, due to its physical and chemical characteristics. The global demand for high-quality food made of durum wheat has been increasing, which poses a challenge in the face of climate change. M...

Understanding, and then modelling, the effects of sowing date and cultivar on maize yield is essential to develop appropriate climate change adaptation strategies. Here we test the WOFOST model and a hybrid model, based on physiological crop conditions around flowering, against observed data collected during 4 years of field experiments in a Medite...

Seasonal climate forecasts are a key component of sectoral climate services. Skill and reliability in predicting agro-climate indicators, co-designed with and for European wheat farmers, are here assessed. The main findings show how seasonal climate forecast provides useful information for decision-making processes in the European winter wheat-prod...

We present ResiPy, a Python object-oriented software to compute the annual production resilience indicator. This indicator can be applied to different anthropic and natural systems, e.g., agricultural production, natural vegetation and water resources, to quantify their stabilities and the risk of adverse events. We propose an illustrative applicat...

Drought and heat stress affect global wheat production and food security. Since these climate hazards are expected to increase in frequency and intensity due to anthropogenic climate change, there is a growing need for effective planning and adaptive actions at all timescales relevant to the stakeholders and users in this sector. This work aims at...

Episodes of extremely strong, northerly winds, known as Etesians and observed during summer, can cause hazardous conditions over the Eastern Mediterranean (EMED). We used an ensemble of six GCM-RCM model chains from EURO-CORDEX at a 12 km resolution to estimate future changes of Etesians over the twenty-first century, under the two Representative C...

Virtually all sub-regions of the Mediterranean Basin, on land and in the sea, are impacted by recent anthropogenic changes in the environment. The main drivers of change include climate (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, extreme events, sea-level rise, sea water temperature, salinity and acidification), population increase, pollu...

Virtually all sub-regions of the Mediterranean Basin, on land and in the sea, are impacted by recent anthropogenic changes in the environment. The main drivers of change include climate (temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, extreme events, sea-level rise, sea water temperature, salinity and acidification), population increase, pollu...

Plant responses to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, together with projected variations in temperature and precipitation will determine future agricultural production. Estimates of the impacts of climate change on agriculture provide essential information to design effective adaptation strategies, and develop sustainable food...

Crop yields are affected by unfavourable/extreme weather and climate events occurring during sensitive growth stages. Understanding the risks associated with these events is essential to adapt agro-management decisions and reduce losses. For this purpose, we propose a targeted climate service integrating a dynamic crop phenology model with an appro...

Food production in the Mediterranean Basin, from both land and the sea, is impacted by climate change, more frequent and intense extreme events, jointly with land degradation, overfishing, ocean acidification and salinization of coastal soils. Climate extremes pose a threat to the entire agriculture sector. Extremes, such as heat stress, droughts b...

This paper presents a Python object-oriented software and code to compute the annual production resilience indicator. The annual production resilience indicator can be applied to different anthropic and natural systems such as agricultural production, natural vegetation and water resources. Here, we show an example of resilience analysis of the eco...

Statistical, data-driven methods are considered good alternatives to process-based models for the sub-national monitoring of cereal crop yields, since they can flexibly handle large datasets and can be calibrated simultaneously to different areas. Here, we assess the influence of several characteristics on the ability of these methods to forecast c...

This report provides quantitative modelling-based results from biophysical and agro-economic models as part of the PESETA-IV (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis) project. We analyse climate change projections for 2050 considering the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP...

The JRC PESETA IV study shows that ecosystems, people and economies in the EU will face major impacts from climate change if we do not urgently mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to climate change. The burden of climate change shows a clear north-south divide, with southern regions in Europe much more impacted, through the effects of extrem...

Agricultural production systems are sensitive to weather and climate anomalies and extremes as well as to other environmental and socio-economic adverse events. An adequate evaluation of the resilience of such systems helps to assess food security and the capacity of society to cope with the effects of global warming and the associated increase of...

Accurate and timely drought information is essential to move from postcrisis to preimpact drought-risk management. A number of drought datasets are already available. They cover the last three decades and provide data in near–real time (using different sources), but they are all “deterministic” (i.e., single realization), and input and output data...

Wheat is the main staple crop and an important commodity in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. These are among the few areas in the world where the climate is suitable for growing durum wheat but also are among the most rapidly warming ones, according to the available scenarios of climate projections. How much food security and market stability...

The Etesians are the dominant synoptically driven winds observed in the Eastern Mediterranean, usually from late spring to late summer. Due to the complex topography, the Etesians can be very strong and pose significant environmental hazards, especially over wildfire incidents. This study assesses the impacts of climate change on future Etesians by...

Satellites offer a privileged view on terrestrial ecosystems and a unique possibility to evaluate their status, their resilience and the reliability of the services they provide. In this study, we introduce two indicators for estimating the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems from the local to the global levels. We use the Normalized Differential...

This study focuses on the northward shift of homogeneous agro‐climate zones in Europe analyzed for the observed past and projected climate conditions for the next decades. Statistical cluster analysis is used to derive eight main agro‐climatic zones driven by two agro‐meteorological indicators, namely active temperature sum and thermal growing seas...

This document presents the contributions presented at the first internal workshop on Artificial Intelligence (AI), organized by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. This workshop was held on 23rd May at the premises of the JRC in Ispra (Italy), with video-conference to all JRC's sites. The workshop aimed to gather JRC special...

We review, analyse and discuss the recent evolution and the future sustainability of rice paddy fields in Italy – the larger European producer – using outcomes from available literature and new analysis of agricultural statistics from local authorities, land‐use and surface temperature data from remote sensing, hydrological and climate data from ob...

Temperature and precipitation are the most important factors responsible for agricultural productivity variations. In 2018 spring/summer growing season, Europe experienced concurrent anomalies of both. Drought conditions in central and northern Europe caused yield reductions up to 50% for the main crops, yet wet conditions in southern Europe saw yi...

Statistical, data-driven methods are considered good alternatives to process-based models for the sub-national monitoring of cereal crop yields since they can flexibly handle large datasets and can be calibrated simultaneously to different areas. In this study, we assess the influence of several characteristics on the ability of these methods to fo...

Europe experienced exceptional climate conditions in spring and summer 2018. The extreme drought in central and northern Europe heavily affected key socio-economic sectors. While, anomalous wet conditions in southern Europe favoured sectors such as agriculture triggering crop yield gains that partially offset the losses in central and northern Euro...

Climate extremes have profound impacts on key socio-economic sectors such as agriculture. In a changing climate context, characterised by an intensification of these extremes and where the population is expected to grow, exposure and vulnerability must be accurately assessed. However, most risk assessments analyse extremes independently, thus poten...

We estimate the effects of climate anomalies (heat stress and drought) on annual maize product ion, variability and trend from the country level to the global scale using a statistical model. Moderate climate anomalies and extremes are diagnosed with two indicators of heat stress and drought computed over maize growing regions during the most relev...