Islamabad: The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) has warned of ill-timed rains in the country in future due to climate change, saying they will threaten crops.
“The future projections indicate that there will be no significant change in rainfall amount due to climate change but its temporal and spatial distribution will be highly influenced due to climate change.It means that untimely rains may threaten the crop production in future increasing losses at maturity stage,” a PMD official said referring to a recent research.
The weatherman said the temperatures were likely to increase at the rate 0.4c per decade in agricultural plains of Punjab and Sindh and thus ultimately increasing water requirement of crops.
He added that the hot weather conditions could retard the crops’ growth and development.
The official added that the research showed that high temperatures coupled with abnormally wet summer climatic conditions in cotton zone could help pathogens grow to hamper good crop yields.
The weatherman said the PMD research indicated that temperatures in agricultural plains had risen over the last 60 years and the increase in the recent two decades was higher than the previous.
