Climate Analogue Mapping for Coffee Production in Ethiopia

Abstract

Coffee farming provides livelihoods for around 15 million farmers in Ethiopia and generates a quarter of the country’s export earnings. Feedback from coffee farming communities, and observations on coffee production and coffee plant stress, indicate that climate change has already had a negative impact. Against a backdrop of rapidly increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall, there is an urgent need to understand the influence of climate change on coffee production. Data Acquisition method obtained monthly surface minimum and maximum air temperature and the sum of rainfall output from in the CMIP archive, four scenarios (SSP1- 2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5) were used from 2001 to 2020 and for future outlook from 2021 to 2040 to assess the exposure of coffee farming to future climatic change. Results suggest that Ethiopia will likely experience increasing temperatures, but changes in rainfall are uncertain. The increasing temperatures will probably be accompanied by mild thermal stress for coffee during the dry seasons or drought. It could be concluded that coffee in the coming decades will probably experience mild thermal stress during the dry seasons, expressed by slight increases in physiological responses, but will probably remain within the normal margins. Timely, precise, science-based decision making is required now and over the coming decades, to ensure sustainability and resilience for the Ethiopian coffee sector.

Keywords: Temperature; Rain fall; Coffee

DOI: 10.7176/JAAS/74-03

Publication date:July 31^st 2021