Climate Change and You: Intense summer heat arrives early in India and rising heat hits global coffee production

Climate Change and You is a fortnightly newsletter written by Bibek Bhattacharya and Sayantan Bera. Subscribe to the newsletter to get it directly in your inbox.

Dear reader,

It’s barely March, and we’re already experiencing rising heat across the country, and predictions suggest that it’s going to get intensely hot this summer. I live in Delhi, and despite the terrible air pollution, one of the things I love about the city is that one actually gets to experience distinct seasons, including spring and autumn. But while the autumn months of October and November are now rendered deadly due to high AQI levels, spring is slowly vanishing.

On 28 February, Delhi’s maximum temperature touched 32.5 degrees Celsius, six degrees above normal. It was the city’s warmest February day in three years, and experts put this down to a lack of rain and wind. “The weather is warmer than normal for this time of the year and will continue to remain so, as we do not expect any significant weather activity. Bright sunshine, no rain or clouds, and no wind disturbances are predicted. Winter rains during this time last year helped keep the temperature in control,” Mahesh Palwat, vice president of Skymet Weather, told Hindustan Times. Delhi has stepped directly from winter to summer.

Delhi isn’t an isolated case. According to data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), both the maximum and minimum temperatures were above average across India, making February the fifth warmest since 1901.

STATE OF THE CLIMATE

A scorching summer awaits

And yet, February may well turn out to be just a snapshot of what the rest of the year holds. On 28 February, IMD also published a summer temperature forecast for March to May. According to the report, India is slated for a hotter-than-normal summer this year, with most parts of the country expected to see above-average daytime temperatures. Nighttime temperatures will also be higher than normal across most of the country. Although the report predicts normal to above-normal rainfall in March, northeast India and parts of west and northwest India will experience deficient rainfall. Heatwaves, too,are a concern. “Above-normal heatwave days are expected over most parts of the country during March to May,” said IMD director-general Mritunjay Mohapatra.

The greater worry is that the heat is rising while La Niña cooling conditions are still in place over the Pacific Ocean. According to the latest data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there’s a strong likelihood of warmer El Niño conditions setting in by August-September. El Niño conditions bring warmer weather,which builds on the climate warming already present in the atmosphere, making record temperatures, droughts, and a weak monsoon more likely.

THE NEWS IN BRIEF

-This important story shows how economists’ models of the impact of climate change onglobal GDP are deeply flawed, and that the effects will be far worse.

-Why India needs to invest in climate adaptation immediately. A well-argued case to shield the Indian economy.

-An excellent piece by climate author Bill McKibben on how Donald Trump’s fossil fuel imperialism can only be opposed through widespread adoption of renewable energy.

CLIMATE CHANGE TRACKER

Coffee production in jeopardy

A new report from Climate Central, an independent body of climate scientists and communicators, found that rising temperatures are affecting coffee production worldwide. The report finds that coffee is becoming harder to produce and, as a result, prices are spiking.

Temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius are extremely harmful to coffee crops. In the 25 coffee-growing countries analysed for this report, Climate Central found that, between 2021-2025, climate change has pushed temperatures beyond that threshold. The so-called ‘bean belt’ countries, all of which are in the tropics, have seen an increase in the number of hotter than optimal temperatures over the years.

For a country like Brazil, which accounts for 37% of global coffee production, climate change has increased the number of hot days (hotter than 30 degrees) by 70 days. For Vietnam (16.5%), the number of hotter days has grown by 59 days. Even in India, which accounts for 3.5% of global coffee production, the number of hot days has increased by 30. Granular data shows that specific coffee-producing states have been more affected than others. Thus, while in Andhra Pradesh the number of hot days has jumped by 34 days, in neighbouring Telangana, this has increased by 44 days. The highest is Kerala with 65 hotter days.

PRIME NUMBER

7.2

One of the most harmful effects of climate change is the heating up of the global ocean. Long-term studies have shown that over the past 50 years, the ocean has absorbed 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions. This leads to greater ocean acidification and marine heatwaves. This, in turn, is decimating the world’s coral reefs and supercharging cyclones and hurricanes.

But it’s not just the sea surface that is heating up, but also the ocean bed. A new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution shows that this is decimating fish biomass around the world, at a rate of 7.2% for every 0.1 degree Celsius of warming.

Researchers analysed annual changes in 33,000 fish populations in the northern hemisphere between 1993-2021 and found that chronic heating (as opposed to short-lived marine heatwaves) poses a significant threat to fish populations and, therefore, to fish-based nutrition sources for humans. Speaking to The Guardian, the lead author of the study, Shahar Chaikin, a marine ecologist, said, “A 7.2% decline for every tenth of a degree per decade might sound small. But compounded over time, across entire ocean basins, it represents a staggering and deeply concerning loss of marine life.”

VIDEO OF THE MONTH

The importance of clouds

PBS Terra is a YouTube channel that I follow quite regularly. Not only do they produce excellent climate videos, but the narration is also really easy to understand and effective. A video from a few days ago (see below) on climate tipping points certainly got my attention. In it, they discuss runaway climate change on ancient Venus and on prehistoric Earth to shed light on one very important planetary system that regulates heat—clouds. Specifically, stratocumulus clouds, the white blanket-like layer that we can often see during flights, especially over oceans.

With interviews from scientists, the video shows how crossing a threshold of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can cause these clouds to disappear from the planet, and that we’re not far from reaching that point. Once this happens, the planet loses a key component that reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere. The result, a far greater amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth, and runaway warming. A fascinating watch.

So that’s it from me this week, dear reader. Sayantan will be back in a fortnight with the next edition of Climate Change & You.