Climate Change and Plantations in The Humid Tropics

Weather and climate play an important role in plantation crops' production. While climate determines the adaptability of a particular crop in a region, weather determines the yield attributes of the crop. The global warming and climate change impacts on plantation crops are evident in the form of extreme weather events like floods, droughts, cold and heat waves and strong cyclonic winds, the frequency of which is likely to be more and more in the ensuing decades as noticed year after year around the globe in 1998, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2015. It is now a topic of concern and the plantations' economy is in a threat in the ensuing decades due to climate variability. Decline in monsoon rainfall with number of rainy days, increasing ambient air temperatures (both day maximum and night minimum), decline in groundwater table, decline in wetland area and surface water resources, increasing number of forest fires and decline in forest area, increasing events of landslides during both the monsoon seasons, indiscriminate sand mining from river beds and unscientific land filling are the important climate change related issues in the Humid Tropics.