AgroClimatology
Understanding regional connections between climate and agriculture
Seasonal climate and wheat yield outlook
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Please note that our outlook is experimental and there is no guarantee for its correctness. We will be happy to receive feedback from farmers and other stakeholders at the end of the season about the forecast performance.
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Our seasonal forecast for 2026 indicates a lower-than-average wheat yield in the 2026 season. In the Northern Negev region, values are mostly between 50%-75% of the multi-year average. In the coastal plain, the values are going up between 75%-100%, but in the Emek Beit She'an, values are decreasing again to below 50%.
Surprisingly, seasonal precipitation values are close to the multi-year average, suggesting that water is not the main limiting factor in this case.
Our seasonal forecast is performed with the WRF model coupled with the crop model component of the Noah-MP land surface model. The model incorporates parameters for wheat cultivars grown in Israel and measured in the field. The values presented are relative to the average forecasted yield for the years 2014-2025. More information on the eight WRF configurations can be found here:
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Strobach, E., & Bel, G. (2019). Regional decadal climate predictions using an ensemble of WRF parameterizations driven by the MIROC5 GCM. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 58(3), 527-549.
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