IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE PRODUCTIVITY OF COFFEE TREES IN SOUTHEASTERN AREAS OF BRAZIL

Abstract

Brazil holds the major share in coffee world market, ranging from 30% to 39% of the overall production. That fruit - a grain - plays a social role since it maintains the workforce in rural areas, the coffee agribusiness generates above 8 millions of jobs. The Arabica species - the most cultivated grain - requires annual temperatures around 18oC - 22 oC. It is worrying the susceptibility of this culture to great variations of temperature, especially when we take into account the climate projections released by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes. Studies done for Brazil showed that the coffee activity would be directly impacted by the climate changes, with significant reductions of production, leading to financial and social losses. However, such studies have considered only agroclimate zoning of the productive regions. Acknowledging the importance of coffee activity in social and economic Brazilian scenario and the future prognosis of rising air temperatures, the thesis proposal consists of the evaluation of the impacts of the climate changes on the coffee productivity in different future climate scenarios. There will be run the IPCC AR5 new climate scenarios that will be generated from the dynamic downscaling from ETA Regional Model in high spatial resolution (5km). The ETA outputs will be input in the surface model INLAND so as to generate the future coffee in Brazil southeastern areas. INLAND integrates the majority of the processes of Earth surface, including the bold physical and physiological effects of the tree cover, phenology and terrestrial carbon cycle.