Assessment and projections of climate change impacts on cotton water requirement: a case study

This study investigates the effects of climate change on the reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0), crop coefficient (KC), phenology, and crop water requirement (CWR) of cotton in the future. As a result, the LARS-WG model and 5 GCMs, including EC-EARTH, GFDL-CM3, HadGEM2-ES, MIROC5, and MPI-ESM, were used to simulate the climate parameters under the RCP scenarios. The findings show an increasing trend in the minimum and maximum temperatures as well as solar radiation, with increases of 2.84(degrees)C, 5.75(degrees)C, and 0.38 MJm(-2)day(-1) toward the end of the century, respectively. Precipitation has an increasing trend in winter and a decreasing trend in spring. ET0 would rise by 1.32 mm/day. Moreover, the length of the growth period of cotton was reduced from 155 days at the base period to 87 days in the far future. As a result, compared to current conditions, cotton's water requirements will rise by 23% and 26% in the near and far future, respectively.