Agricultural Applications of Meteorology and Climate Forecasting

Dear Colleagues,

Weather is a major driver of agricultural productivity and production risk. High input costs necessitate optimal choices before and during growing seasons and decisions need to be based on well packaged effective information to ensure a viable return on investment. Agriculture’s dependance on the weather will be underscored once again over large parts of the world as extreme and large-scale weather anomalies accompany the very strong El Niño event in 2026/27. There will be a renewed emphasis on proactive management in agriculture to maximize productivity and strengthen the resilience in response to weather conditions. The potential contribution of weather information at various timescales to contribute to successful farming has increased markedly in recent years. Short- and medium-range forecasts provide much more detailed spatial information for hyper-focused applications. Improved accuracy of forecasts renders them a viable component in short to medium-term decision-making process. Improved observations and advances in coupled models have also increased the applicability of seasonal forecasts to anticipate climatic risks and inform strategic positioning. Forecasts are indeed evolving into actionable climate services, where a hierarchy of forecasts is translated into management recommendations and combined with impact models to provide effective commodity-specific and quantitative projections that support science-based decision-making. This Special Issue aims to present and disseminate the most recent advances related to how meteorological outlooks at various time- and spatial scales can improve production and reduce risk in agriculture. We consider contributions addressing recent advances in the contribution weather information makes to agricultural productivity and resilience.

Topics of interest for publication include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Verification and evaluation of agricultural weather forecasts;
• Using short-, medium- and seasonal weather forecasts for operational decision making;
• Response farming: Adapting agricultural practices (e.g., planting, irrigation, pest and disease control, fertilizing etc.) to climate variability, observed and forecast weather;
• Integrating weather observations with crop-, pasture- and livestock models for decision support;
• Early warning systems pertinent to agriculture;
• Agricultural insurance and risk reduction strategies;
• Weather-based index insurance;
• Precision agriculture and weather intelligence;
• Digital agriculture and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Johan Malherbe
Prof. Dr. Sue Walker
Dr. Sarah Roffe
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.