Millions of individuals globally rely on coffee crops as a crucial revenue stream, yet with impending climate changes, coffee plantations face the risk of perishing or not flourishing. Coffee plants are susceptible to climate change and variations, with limited adaptability to temperature and precipitation alterations. Experts predict that climate change could decrease the current coffee farming areas by up to 50%, leading to significant economic consequences.
Nevertheless, recent research has pointed out an additional manner in which climate change is poised to impact the growth of coffee. Yearly harvests are prone to particular climate risks, such as droughts, heat waves, floods, and frosts, all of which are expected to intensify in frequency in the coming years. Additionally, when these hazards overlap in regions where coffee is produced, they can lead to widespread crop losses that jeopardize the international coffee market.
To enhance their comprehension of how broad climate models, including El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO), could result in simultaneous crop failures of coffee across multiple nations, the investigators methodically assessed climate hazard and compound event literature in regions where coffee is produced from 1980 to 2020. They pinpointed 12 climate risks that endanger coffee crops in the primary 12 coffee-producing countries. For instance, when temperatures are excessively low during the flowering season or excessively high during the growth phase.
The researchers discovered that the frequency of climate hazards has risen globally since 1980. Except for Uganda and India, most of the areas analyzed have encountered an increased number of hazards solely in the past ten years. In the last decade, there have been five years in which all regions experienced at least 20 hazards, as opposed to only one occurrence in prior years. This indicates that there is a risk to the global supply of coffee on a large scale due to the cumulative effect of climate hazards.
The researchers identified that the nature of climate hazards has shifted from those linked to excessively cool conditions to those that arise in excessively warm or dry situations over the previous four decades. The experts state that global coffee production has become more susceptible to simultaneous crop failures caused by climate hazards affecting several critical coffee-producing regions at the same time since 1980.
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