PLOS Climate: global warming has become a threat to the cultivation of coffee in the world

Climatologists from the Australian research organization CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, in the course of their research, found that anthropogenic climate change poses a systemic risk to coffee cultivation. They published the results of their work in a thorough professional article in the journal PLOS Climate.

To better understand how large-scale climate formations such as the Southern Oscillation can lead to simultaneous coffee crop failures in multiple producing regions, the researchers analyzed the relevant statistics of adverse climate trends and severe weather events from 1980 to 2020, explains Lenta.ru.

The phase of the Southern Oscillation is the El Niño, better known to the public, which determines the natural fluctuations in the temperature of the surface water layer of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This phenomenon recurs at intervals of 2-7 years and contributes to abnormally high temperatures and droughts that affect countries, including coffee-producing countries.

During the study, climatologists were able to show that over the period under review, the number of climatic hazards and adverse events increased in each key coffee growing area. At the same time, these misfortunes themselves have changed: previously, excessively cool conditions caused crop failures, and now extreme heat and drought are more often responsible for the same result.

However, the published article by climatologists, although it shows rather complex special tools that made it possible to interpret the main conclusions, quite clearly leaves the idea that it is anthropogenic factors that influence the formation of observed trends and phenomena beyond the scope of discussion. That is, it simply proceeds from the fact that the cause of global changes in the coimata is a person. However, not everyone in the scientific community believes in such a decisive role in climate change armed with calculators and internal combustion engines.