Co-production of a week-2 rainfall probabilistic prediction tool for small farmers activities in southern South America

LEANDRO B. DÍAZ; MARISOL OSMAN; CAROLINA VERA; FEDERICO ROBLEDO; CAMILA PRUDENTE; VALERIA HERNANDEZ; FLORENCIA FOSSA RIGLOS; NAHUEL SPINOSO; ALFREDO ROLLA; MARÍA INÉS ORTIZ DE ZÁRATE

Kigali

Conferencia; 2nd Open Science Conference of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).; 2023

World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)

Research about the understanding and prediction of climate variability has made considerable progress during the recent decades at global scales and in particular in South America. However, the literature confirms that there is an important gap between that scientific knowledge and its potential social appropriation. Aiming on narrowing this gap, the scientific community started to develop innovative methodologies, focused on interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral interaction. Within the framework of the international CLIMAX project (http://www.climax-sa.org/), we put into practice a co-production experience with small farmers, political decision-makers and an interdisciplinary team of researchers (climatologists and anthropologists) in the Gran Chaco wetland area of Argentina, with the aim of co-producing climate information tools to underpin local family agriculture. This experience is based on the theoretical framework of implicated science approach (Hernández et al. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102443). The co-production in the territory is organized in “co-production cycles” to produce disciplinary, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral knowledge. We will present the co-production cycle that led to a sub-seasonal local prediction tool for the cumulative precipitation of week 2 (days 8 to 14) for the Bermejo Department (Chaco Province, Argentina). This experience was built on ethnographic fieldwork and a series of co-production cycles developed in the Bermejo territory (e.g. co-production of a community rainfall monitoring network). To develop the prediction tool, a set of workshops were carried on in the Bermejo Department, with the participation of small farmers and other local actors interested or involved in the project. The forecast time and spatial scale were decided upon the actual needs for the local community (agricultural producers centered on daily and local-scale forecasts), what products the scientific team could develop based on their experience and resources, and which prediction products are not available for the region. Several rounds of academic interdisciplinary work led to different forecast prototypes that were shared and discussed in territorial co-production workshops. As a result, a novel week-2 accumulated rainfall probabilistic prediction for social-relevant precipitation thresholds has been developed based on CFS operative forecasts and corrected by quantile-based bias. The tool is available in the “Diálogo Bermejo” web Application (https://bermejo.cima.fcen.uba.ar/) and has been widely used by the local farmers. The successful experience of this development highlights the importance of involving local communities in developing climate information tools that can be socially appropriated.