Farmers now have access to a free new interactive online tool to help mitigate their risks and cope with the effects of climate change, courtesy of the University of California Cooperative Extension and the USDA California Climate Hub.

The tool, CalAgroClimate, is an online decision support tool to help farmers make production decisions by integrating historical weather data, forecast information and crop-specific information.

CalAgroClimate currently has four tools available and intends to add several more in the future. Each tool uses location-specific and crop-specific information to generate customized results.

The initial set of tools are: 

• Heat Advisory Tool: Provides a map of heat risk based on location and temperature threshold
• Frost Advisory Tool: Provides a map of frost advisory based on location and temperature threshold
• Crop Phenology Tool: Provides near real-time crop phenology information using crop and location specific information
• Pest Advisory Tool: Provides estimated growing season pest generations using crop, location, threshold, and pest specific information. 

This resource and other resources to support farmers, ranchers and farmworkers are available on CalCAN’s Resources for Climate Resilience page. 

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Dr. Tapan Pathak is the lead investigator on theCalAgroClimate development team and a UC Cooperative Extension climate adaptation specialist at UC Merced. He’s a member of CalCAN’s Science & Technical Advisory Council, and was a 2019 recipient of CalCAN’s Agricultural Climate Leadership Award.