**3. Overview of climate change in Myanmar**

Myanmar has a tropical climate with three seasons: summer, rainy and winter. Summer season starts from March and April, rainy season starts from May to October, and winter season starts from November to February. Seasonal temperatures vary largely in most of the regions/state in the country. The Central Dry Zone is highest in temperature and lowest in mean annual precipitation (500–1,000 mm/ year). The maximum temperature has 40–43°C in the hot/dry season to minimum temperature has 10–15°C in the cool/relatively dry season and decrease from 0°C to −1°C in the hilly. The Coastal region, south of the country does not vary in seasonal temperature [14].

The climate trend over last six decades are found as a rise in mean temperature by around 0.08°C each decade; overall rise in rainfall throughout the country; rise in sea level and more extreme weather events such as drought and flood; and the monsoon period become shorter with more intense rainfall [15]. Over last three decade (1981–2010), temperature increased 0.14°C and 0.35°C per decade in coastal and inland regions. During the period between 1981 and 2010, total annual precipitation increased by 157 mm per decade in coastal areas and by 37 mm per decade inland [3].

Between year 2000 to 2010, the climate trend over last decades can be seen as large variation in highest temperature with 1.158°C and lowest temperature with 0.162°C. After year 2010, temperature had been an increasing trend from lowest temperature with 0.467°C to highest temperature with 1.552 [16].

Extreme weather events like droughts and flood are the main cause of natural disaster in Myanmar. The average annual rainfall of Myanmar is about 1630 mm, with half of the country lying within the 1500–2000 mm. Flooding and land slide occurred due to high intensity rainfall in dry zone areas [17].

The new climate change projections for Myanmar reveals a 0.8–2.7°C increase in minimum temperature and a 0.8–2.6°C increase in maximum temperature by the end of 2100 under representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5. Under RCP 8.5, minimum and maximum temperatures will increase by 0.9–4.6°C and 0.8–4.4°C respectively. Precipitation is projected to rise by 36 percent under RCP 4.5 and 40 percent under RCP 8.5.

Other key features of probable change at country level consists of increasing temperature with more extreme hot days and more extreme rainfall, resulting in more droughts and floods; increasing risk of flooding as a result of higher average rainfall intensity in monsoon events; more variable rainfall in the rainy season across the country (but particularly in the north) from March to November and a decrease between December and February [18]; more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, including cyclones/strong winds, flood/storm surge, intense rains, extreme high temperatures, drought and sea level rise [19].

## **4. Most common crops and production in Myanmar**

Myanmar mainly produce the most common crops such as rice, pulses and beans, and maize and other crops in four different zones: Delta zone, Coastal zone,

#### *Macro Analysis of Climate Change and Agricultural Production in Myanmar DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98970*

Central dry zone, and hilly and mountainous zone. Rice is the main staple food crop, cultivating nearly 50% of Myanmar's agricultural land [15]. The Ayeyarwady Delta Region contributes the largest share of production of rice while central dry zone contributes the highest share of pulses and beans. Among the most common crops, rice is normally grown during the monsoon season and pulses and beans are largely grown during the dry season. The Delta zone including Yangon, Bago, Ayeyarwaddy, and Mon state largely grow major crops such as rice, and pulses; Coastal zone including Tanintharyi Region, Mon State, Kayin State mainly grow rice, rubber, oil palm and fruit tree; Central dry zone including Magway, Mandalay largely grow rice for subsistence, oil cops, pulses, sesame, groundnuts, vegetables and tea; hilly and mountainous zone including Shan, Chin typically grow rice, wheat, maize, sorghum, vegetables, sugarcane, and coffee.

The total arable land increased from 9909 hectare in 2000 to 11080.3 hectare in 2018. Major export crops are rice and pulses. The country has a huge potential for agricultural development due to abundant in natural resources but has been facing some constraints such as providing irrigation and provision of infrastructures, insecure land titles, limited financial resources, provision of farm inputs and extension services, limited use of farm machinery and low investment in the development of its agricultural sector. The annual variation of crop production and yields is caused by seasonal nature of farming, climatic variations and extreme events [17]. The precipitation, temperature and humidity influence the types, production and yield of crops depending on different spatial location, indicating that different climate in different location affect production of crop [20].

The crop yield has found significant annual variation over the past decade due to different factors such as holding with insufficient land appropriate for diversification covering with an average lot size of 2.27 ha [15] largely relying on rainwater for irrigation, frequent flooding and drought stress. The paddy production and yield had increasing trend over the past decade but decreasing trend after year 2010 due to the reason that paddy plantations were damaged in 2015 by flood, accounting for 79 percent of total damage areas and 89 percent of the destroyed crops [21]. More than a million acres of cultivated land were adversely affected by heavy monsoonrelated flood in 2018 as well as about 250,000 acres were destroyed especially paddy, maize, sesame, various beans and pulses (Myanmar Time 2018). The production and yield had been increasing in 2017–2018 due to favorable weather and more provision of irrigated water to farmers [1, 16]. The 26.3 million tonnes of rice (paddy), 1.6 million tonnes of groundnut and 0.7 million tonnes of sesame seeds were produced under the crop land area of 110830.3 ha [16].
