Record-breaking rain over the past few months has left fields of crops under water and livestock’s health at risk, adding to pressures on food producers.
The flooding and extreme weather linked to climate change will undermine UK food production unless farmers get more help, the National Farmers Union said.
The NFU is calling on the government to do more to compensate flooded farmers and support domestic food production.
The government said it was looking to expand a new compensation scheme.
The NFU has warned of “substantially reduced output” and “potential hits” to the quality of crops in this year’s harvest thanks to weeks of rain since the autumn.
NFU vice president Rachel Hallos said UK farmers were “on the front line of climate change – one of the biggest threats to UK food security”.
“These extremes could soon become the norm,” she told the BBC. “We need a clear plan from government to prepare, adapt and recover from our changing climate in the short and long term so that we can continue to produce food and care for the countryside.”
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Over the last year, our oceans have been hotter than any time ever recorded. Our instrumental record covers the last 150 years. But based on proxy observations, we can say our oceans are now hotter than well before the rise of human civilisation, very likely for at least 100,000 years.
This isn’t wholly unexpected. Ocean temperatures have been steadily rising due to human-caused global warming, which in turn means record hottest years have become increasingly common. The last time ocean temperature records were broken was 2016 and before that it was 2015. The last year we experienced a record cold year was way back at the start of the 20th century.
But what is remarkable about the past year is the huge ongoing spike in global ocean temperature which began in April last year. Last year was hotter than the previous record year by a whopping 0.25°C. In contrast the margins of other previous record years were all less than 0.1°C.
Why? Global warming is the main reason. But it doesn’t explain why the heat spike has been so large. Climate drivers such as El Niño likely play a role, as do the random alignment of certain weather events and possibly the reduction in sulfur emissions from shipping. Researchers around the world are trying to understand what’s going on.
Averaged ocean surface temperatures between 60 degrees south and 60 degrees north of the equator, inspired by ClimateReanalyzer.org. Each coloured line represents the temperature of a single year. Author provided, CC BY
The trend is clear to see. Earlier years (in blue) are typically cooler than later years (in red), reflecting the relentless march of global warming. But even with this trend, there are outliers. In 2023 and 2024, you can see a huge jump above previous years.
These record temperatures have been widespread, with the oceans of the southern hemisphere, northern hemisphere and the tropics all reaching record temperatures.
What’s behind the surge?
We don’t yet have a complete explanation for this record burst of warming. But it’s likely several factors are involved.
First, and most obvious, is global warming. Year on year the ocean is gaining heat through the enhanced greenhouse effect – indeed over 90% of the heat associated with human-caused global warming has gone into the oceans.
The extra heat pouring into the oceans results in a gradual rise in temperature, with the trend possibly accelerating. But this alone doesn’t explain why we have experienced such a big jump in the last year.
Then there are the natural drivers. The El Niño event developing in June last year has certainly played a substantial role.
El Niño and its partner, La Niña, are opposite ends of a natural oscillation, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, which plays out in the tropical Pacific ocean. This cycle moves heat vertically between the ocean’s deeper waters and the surface. When El Niño arrives, warmer water comes up to the surface. During La Niña, the opposite occurs.
You can see the impact of an El Niño on short term temperature spikes clearly, even against a backdrop of strong long-term warming.
But even climate change and El Niño combined aren’t enough to explain it.
Other natural heat-transferring oscillations, such as the Indian Ocean Dipole or the North Atlantic Oscillation, may play a role.
It may also be that our successful efforts to cut aerosol pollution from the dirty fuel shipping relies on has had an unwanted side effect: more warming. With less reflective aerosols in the atmosphere, more of the Sun’s energy can reach the surface.
But there’s probably also a level of random chance. Chaotic weather systems over the ocean can reduce cloud cover, which can let in more solar radiation. Or these weather systems could weaken winds, reducing cooling evaporation.
Why is this important?
To us, a warmer ocean might feel pleasant. But the extra heat manifests underwater as an unprecedented series of major marine heatwaves. The ocean’s organisms are picky about their preferred temperature range. If the heat spikes too much and for too long, they have to move or die.
Marine heatwaves can lead to mass death or mass migration for marine mammals, seabirds, fish and invertebrates. They can cause vital kelp forests and seagrass meadows to die, leaving the animals depending on them without shelter or food. And they can disrupt species important for fisheries and tourism.
This year’s heat stress has caused widespread coral bleaching around the world. Bleaching has been seen on reefs in the Caribbean, Florida, Egypt, and the Great Barrier Reef.
In the cooler waters of Tasmania, extraordinary conservation efforts have been put in place to try and protect endangered fish species such as the red handfish from the heat, while in the Canary Islands, small scale commercial fisheries have popped up for species not normally found there.
Last year, Peru’s anchovy fishery – the country’s largest – was closed for long periods, leading to export losses estimated at A$2.1 billion.
What’s going to happen next?
Given the record temperatures stem from a combination of human-induced climate change and natural sources, it’s very likely ocean temperatures will drop back to more “normal” temperatures. Normal now is, of course, much warmer than in previous decades.
If this eventuates, we might see slightly cooler temperatures than the new normal, but it’s still too early to know for sure.
One thing is certain though. As we struggle to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, the steady march of global warming will keep adding more heat to the oceans. And another spike in global ocean warming won’t be too far away.
Since June 2023, every month has been the “hottest ever” on record. Image: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire/empics/picture alliance.
The past 10 months have all been the hottest on record. The average global temperature in March was 1.68 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average.
Last month was 0.1 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous March, and 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter than an average March between the years 1850-1900, the reference period for the pre-industrial era.
Above-average temperatures were recorded in parts of Africa, South America, Greenland and Antarctica. Sea surface temperatures also hit a “shocking new high,” the report said.
Hottest 12-month period
The average temperature for the 12-month period ending in March was 1.58 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average, making it the warmest 12-month period on record.
This record warmth does not necessarily mean that global temperatures have broken the 1.5-degree limit set by world leaders in Paris in 2015 as such measurements are taken in decades rather than individual years, but it does show a general trend in that direction.
“It’s the long-term trend with exceptional records that has us very concerned,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of C3S told Reuters news agency.
“Seeing records like this — month in, month out — really shows us that our climate is changing, is changing rapidly,” she added.
Climate change and its effects have been seen across the globe. This year itself, Venezuela saw a record number of wildfires, and southern Africa has faced drought conditions. Warm waters in the southern hemisphere are causing a mass coral bleaching event.
[ed: I did provide a link but it should be available to subscribers to https://rogerhallam.com only]
Earth, we have a problem
Societies around the world did not allow the current ecological collapse. Governments did. Since the 1990s, a false narrative was promoted around the world that individuals should take responsibility for their ‘carbon footprint’. Or that ‘it’s the corporations’, the fossil fuel and other polluting industries that are to blame. Yet governments are the only institutions with the power, and the responsibility, to protect us from harm. But they haven’t used that power.
In the UK and around the globe, people have inherited a government system and a civil society community of environmental NGOs unable to address the threat we now face to the continued existence of humankind. Government is something created by society to protect us from such threats. Yet it has failed.
We need to rescue the concept of revolution from left wing political ideology into a more classical 19th century tradition where we’ve had enough of corruption and the gross abuse of power. The challenge we face with the climate emergency is to promote the message that climate change affects us all and so we all need to act.
There is no avoiding the following analysis: that the world’s political systems which have facilitated a 60% increase in global emissions since the beginning of the crisis in 1990 have no ability to stop a continued rise in CO2,
let alone create the political will to massively reduce levels (40% in the next ten years according to the UN October report ).
This leads us to the grave conclusion that the probability of organising a political revolution to remove the corrupt political class has a higher chance (if small/indeterminate) than the chance that the political class will respond to the climate crisis (effectively zero, as evidenced by the last 30 years). This then is the central meta strategic point of this paper.
