TEMPO.CO, Canberra - Increasing climate hazards could pose a major threat to global coffee production, Australian scientists have warned.

In a study published on Friday, March 10, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and the University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ) found that climate hazards increased in all of the world's top 12 coffee-producing regions between 1980 and 2020.

Due to climate change, hazards such as extremes in temperature and rainfall are now occurring in multiple regions.

Doug Richardson, a CSIRO research scientist who led the project, said coffee is a sensitive crop vulnerable to the effects of global warming. "Coffee crops can fail if the annual average temperature and rainfall is not within an optimal range," he said in a media release.

"The frequency of climate events has been increasing over the last 40 years and we see clear evidence of global warming playing a role, as the predominant types of climate hazards have shifted from cold and wet to warm and dry."

According to him, since 1980, global coffee production has become increasingly at risk of synchronized crop failures, which can be driven by climate hazards that affect multiple coffee-producing areas simultaneously.

According to a separate study published in 2014 by researchers from the Humboldt University of Berlin, land suitable for growing coffee could be reduced by 50 percent by 2050, threatening the livelihoods of tens of millions of people.

The CSIRO and UniSQ study found that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a recurring climate pattern affecting the tropics and extratropics, is a strong indicator of hazards in tropical South America, Indonesia and Vietnam.

It said that growers in southern Brazil, where conditions are unaffected by ENSO, could help offset production losses in those areas during significant ENSO events.

Xinhua

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