Agriculture plays an important role in Senegalese economy and annual early warning predictions of crop yields are highly relevant in the context of climate change. In this study, we used three main machine learning methods (support vector machine, random forest, neural network) and one multiple linear regression method, namely Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), to predict yields of the main food staple cr...

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is one of the most prominent patterns of atmospheric circulation variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Its climate impacts have been identified for regions extending from North America to northern Asia and the Middle East, with implications for sub‐seasonal variability and, in some cases, meteorological trends over multiple years to decades. The NAO itself, however, is the combined expres...

Climate change directly threatens food security in West Africa through a negative impact on productivity of the main staple food crops. However, providing consistent future crop yield projections in the region remains challenging because of uncertainty in the response of the regional climate to the CO 2 increase and in the response of the cultivated crop to this altered climate with more CO 2 in the atmosphere. Here, we analys...

The reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) is an integrated climatic variable from which many crop models derive simulated crop yields. In most of these models, different equations are parameterized leaving the choice of the equation to the user. However, the impact of the choice of the ET 0 equations on crop yield prediction has been little studied. The present study proposes a sensitivity analysis of the impact of the choice o...

Several lines of evidence point to European managed grassland ecosystems being a sink of carbon. In this study, we apply ORCHIDEE ‐ GM a process‐based carbon cycle model that describes specific management practices of pastures and the dynamics of carbon cycling in response to changes in climatic and biogeochemical drivers. The model is used to simulate changes in the carbon balance [i.e., net biome production ( NBP )] of Europ...

The greenhouse gas ( GHG ) balance of European grasslands ( EU ‐28 plus Norway and Switzerland), including CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 O, is estimated using the new process‐based biogeochemical model ORCHIDEE ‐ GM over the period 1961–2010. The model includes the following: (1) a mechanistic representation of the spatial distribution of management practice; (2) management intensity, going from intensively to extensively managed; (3) g...

Cotton is the main tradable crop of West and Central African countries, representing for some countries the main exported agricultural product. Cotton is then of major concern since it represents an important source of income, accounting for more than a tenth of total exports. Moreover, the subsector as a whole is essential for rural poverty reduction. Since cotton is a rainfed crop in these countries, its yield is closely rel...