Saudi Arabia's Second National Communication - Official Document - October 2011

The creation of a National Communication offers countries the opportunity to contribute with technically sound studies and information that can be used for designing mitigation and adaptation measures, and project proposals that can and will help increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change. Activities generally include: V&A assessments, Greenhouse Gas Inventory preparation, Mitigation Analysis or Education, and awareness raising activities. The ultimate goal is the integration of climate change considerations into relevant social, economic and environmental policies and actions.

Most of Saudi Arabia has sensitive ecosystem for any level of climate change especially on desertification processes. Assessment of these impacts indicated clearly that most regions have high vulnerability levels for climate change impacts on desertification processes. The climate change impacts as represented by temperature increase would elevate the levels of reference evapo-transpiration by about 1-4.5% at 1oC increase, and by about 6-19.5% at 5 oC increase in most regions. The expected yield losses of different types of field crops (including cereals, vegetables and forage crops) and fruit trees (including date palms) will range between 5 and more than 25%.