Combining a weather generator and a standard sensitivity analysis method to quantify the relevance of weather variables on agrometeorological models outputs

Sensitivity analysis (SA) is increasingly used to explain models behaviour in response to inputs variation. Agrometeorologists are used to apply standard SA methods only on model parameters because of the difficulty of applying standard sampling techniques to derive series of weather data where each value cannot be sampled independently from those of the neighbouring days and from other variables in the same day. The impact of weather variability on a crop model was here analysed by coupling the Morris SA method to a weather generator. Spring barley in northern Italy was simulated and different outputs considered. Under the explored conditions, parameters involved with temperature generation resulted the most relevant in determining yield and maturity date. Radiation-related parameters were high-ranked for cumulated drainage and actual evapotranspiration. According to the author, this is the first time the sensitivity of a cropping system model to weather variables is quantified using standard SA techniques.