Seasonal forecasts of irrigation requirements at 1 km over the Po river basin (SPHERE-SFC-Agrhyd)

General Description

The SPHERE-SFC-Agrhyd dataset consists of high-resolution retrospective seasonal forecasts of irrigation requirements over the Po river basin (Italy). The dataset has been produced through a coupled soil-water-balance and crop-growth model using downscaled meteorological data at 1 km resolution. The dataset covers maize and forage crops in the hindcast period 1993-2016 for starting date May 1st with lead time up to 6 months.

Seasonal forecast systems

This dataset includes seasonal forecasts of irrigation requirements derived from the downscaled meteorological outputs of a selected Copernicus seasonal forecast system (ECMWFS51) generated within the SPHERE project (DOI: 10.82214/sphere-sfc/meteo-wj7w-fe25).

Version

1.0

File Format and Structure

Data are provided in NetCDF format (CF-compliant), with a regular longitude-latitude grid (689 × 309 points).

Spatial and temporal coverage

Horizontal resolution: ~1 km
Domain: Po river basin (Italy) - Masked for the crop irrigated areas
Period: 1993 – 2016
Temporal resolution: monthly

Main dimensions

time (unlimited)
lon (689)
lat (309)
levels (25 ensemble members)

Available variables

monthly total irrigation requirement (mm)

Starting dates

May 1st

Methods

Paper submitted: Shahmohammadi.A, & Tamea.S (2026), “Modeling four decades of daily irrigation requirements in the Po Basin: validation, trends, and spatial variability”, [manuscript submitted to Agricultural Water Management]
Paper in preparation: “seasonal forecasts of irrigation requirements at 1 km resolution over the Po basin”. Please contact: info@sphere-project.it

Authors

Amirarsalan Shahmohammadi (1), Martina Viscido (1), Stefania Tamea (1), Matteo Lorenzo (2), Silvia Terzago (2), Marta Tuninetti (1).
(1) DIATI, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
(2) Istituto di Scienze dell'Atmosfera e del Clima, CNR-ISAC, Torino, Italy

License

CC-By icon Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Dataset