Climate change impacts on the cultivation areas of date palm tree in Iran

Possible future climatic changes can be regarded as one of the greatest challenges for planning in the current area. With a documentary-statistical approach, the present research was carried out in the central and southern regions of Iran. Initially, in the long term, the condition of the climate variability was taken into account and then future climate changes in date palm cultivation areas were projected. Based on the observational data, the years between 1985 and 2015 were recognized as the baseline period. For the future period, the output of the CMIP5 simulating model under RCP scenarios in the MarkSimGCM database was utilized. Based on the trend analysis done through the Mann-Kendal test, the results revealed a significant increasing trend in the climate parameters having an impact on Iran date palm cultivation areas in the baseline period. This increasing trend is of high significance for the temperature components such as maximum and minimum temperatures, hot days, and the heat accumulation. In the light of the projected data in the adjacent areas and higher latitudes in the central Iran, the evaluation of the effective climatic parameters uncovered that heat potentials in terms of maximum and minimum temperatures and heat potential from growing degree-days exist for the cultivation of date palm trees. In fact, based on the climatic monitoring conducted through simulated data in the regions adjacent to date palm cultivation, 3,913,444,190 ha will be extended to the date palm cultivation areas in the central region of Iran in the future (i.e., till 2081).