Integrating farmers’ perceptions into climate change assessment in the data-scarce Peruvian Amazon

Climate change affects agriculture worldwide, with stronger socio-economic impacts in low-income countries where the lack of data hinders the implementation of effective interventions to face climate change effects. The paper proposes an approach to assess local effects associated with climate change in data-scarce contexts, integrating farmers’ perceptions with available climate data. The method is tested in the Upper Huallaga basin, in the Peruvian selva. The analysis of climate trends in time series of daily data from a local weather station and ERA-5 reanalysis data is integrated with 73 structured interviews with farmers. The resulting increasing temperature trend of 0.2 $$^{\circ }$$ C per decade is consistent with the farmers’ perception. On the other hand, farmers also highlight an increase in wind gusts and precipitation, in contrast with the available quantitative data. This is further investigated analysing trends in annual crop water deficit and surplus volumes, which can be viewed as a proxy for plant health conditions, and may influence the farmers’ perception of climate change. Results show a recent increase in the annual crop water deficit and surplus volumes, suggesting an increase in sub-daily convective rainfall events, possibly explaining farmers’ perceptions. The proposed approach effectively allows for assessing climatic alterations, their effects, and locally driven adaptation measures in data-scarce regions, as well as providing some insights into trends in sub-daily meteorological events.