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Getty Images
Uh oh. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but global warming could be responsible for more than just rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
It’s also slowly killing coffee.
A study by conservation group Kew suggests that global warming could lead to the extinction of wild Arabica coffee by 2080. The study uses computer modeling to hypothesize how coffee production will be impacted by climate change, running through possible scenarios and to determine the prevalence of
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Getty Images
Uh oh. I don’t mean to alarm anyone, but global warming could be responsible for more than just rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
It’s also slowly killing coffee.
A study by conservation group Kew suggests that global warming could lead to the extinction of wild Arabica coffee by 2080. The study uses computer modeling to hypothesize how coffee production will be impacted by climate change, running through possible scenarios and to determine the prevalence of bioclimatically suitable regions for coffee growth.
The most favorable model predicted a 65 percent reduction in coffee-growing regions by 2080. The most dire model showed a 100 percent reduction.
In summary:
The logical conclusion is that Arabica coffee production is, and will continue to be, strongly influenced by accelerated climate change, and that in most cases the outcome will be negative for the coffee industry. Optimum cultivation conditions are likely to become increasingly difficult to achieve in many pre-existing coffee growing areas, leading to a reduction in productivity, increased and intensified management (such as the use of irrigation) and crop failure (some areas becoming unsuitable for Arabica cultivation).
Despite a recent dip, coffee prices are still the highest they have been for some 30 years, due to a combination of high demand and poor harvests. It is perceived by various stakeholders that some of the poor harvests are due to changed climate conditions, thus linking price increases to climate change.
Read all about it straight from the source.
Visit seattlepi.com’s home page for more Seattle news. Contact Amy Rolph at [email protected]. Find more of her stories on Twitter via @amyrolph and @bigblog or subscribe to her updates on Facebook.
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