Successive heatwaves through Europe, the US, and China, with the global hottest day ever registered, threaten nature’s ability to provide us with food and endanger human life as well as the land and sea.
According to John Marsham, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Leeds, “There are growing risks of simultaneous major crop losses in different regions in the world, which will really affect food availability and prices”. However, we are not witnessing it in the present, but it would probably become a reality in the coming decades.
In 2018 Europe has already suffered multiple crop failures and a loss of yield of up to 50% in central and northern Europe. While fruit and vegetables on the vine died in the UK because of record temperatures in 2022. By 2040 heatwaves are expected to become 12 times more frequent compared with pre-warming levels.
Marsham added that people are generally not aware of the weather on which we all depend, since they do not grow it themselves but simply go to shops and buy food. However, farmers anywhere in the world are extremely conscious of what the weather is doing, and the impacts on their farming.
Even the ocean is suffering from climate change: scientists warn global heating may mean a future of an “unseen, silent dying” in our oceans. This means both harming coastal communities and threatening a further food source for humankind. Moreover, heat stress is responsible for dramatic die-offs such as the 2021 “heat dome” along Canada’s Pacific coast, where 1 billion marine animals were killed.
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