January 27, 2012

Warming may boost UK grain harvest

In the next 40 years, sugar and wheat farming is likely to be more productive as the average temperature increases across the UK, the government concluded in a report reviewing the effect of climate change.

Sugar beet yields may rise 20-70% and wheat yields by as much as 140% because the atmosphere is warming, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said today.

"A warmer climate presents opportunities to grow new crops such as soya, sunflowers, peaches, apricots and grapes," the department said a statement in London.

The study also found that climate-related deaths would increase in the summer and decline in the winter and that both floods and dangerous droughts would become more frequent. The report is meant to advise Prime Minister David Cameron's government on the measures it needs to endorse to adapt to climate change.

"Without an effective plan to prepare for the risks from climate change, the country may sleepwalk into disaster," John Krebs, a lawmaker who leads the Committee on Climate Change, said in the statement.

The number of days that the temperature rises above 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) may increase from about 18 currently to 27 to 121 days by the 2080s, Defra said. That would reduce the need for heating in buildings and increase the demand for air conditioning.

Premature deaths in cold weather that currently range from 26,000 to 57,000 a year in the UK may decline to 3,900 to 24,000 by the 2050s. An additional 580 to 5,900 people may die in heat waves by then, the report said.