| (Click on a 'Start Time' to view the video) |
| 0:00 | Back in April of this year I made a video examining major changes that were brewing |
| 0:05 | in the ENSO weather and ocean current system down here in the South Pacific. Most of us will |
| 0:11 | have heard of the two extremes of that system, the cooler than average La Nina phase and the warmer |
| 0:16 | than average El Nino phase. There’s also a neutral phase, which is roughly where the ENSO system was |
| 0:22 | when that April video was made, having been in the cooler La Nina phase for an unusually long period |
| 0:28 | of about three years. Meteorologists classify the warmer El Nino event as occurring when sea surface |
| 0:34 | temperature in the Niño three-four region of the Pacific Ocean reaches nought-point-five degrees |
| 0:39 | Celsius above average. Temperatures above THAT indicate STRONGER El Niño conditions. |
| 0:45 | All the projections coming out of the major meteorological organisations at the time were |
| 0:50 | for a moderate to strong El Nino event to develop during Summer twenty-twenty-three and continue |
| 0:55 | into Spring twenty-twenty-four. There was nothing unusual in that prediction. It’s a perfectly |
| 1:00 | normal consequence of the natural ebbs and flows in wind patterns and ocean currents in that part |
| 1:06 | of the world. What was unusual though, was the record high sea surface temperatures that ALREADY |
| 1:12 | existed in almost every other region of our global oceans as a direct consequence of climate change. |
| 1:19 | By July, the average peak sea surface temperature in the Niño three four region |
| 1:24 | had moved up to about one degree Celsius above average, with a trajectory taking it |
| 1:28 | towards one-point-nine-nine degrees Celsius by December, indicating that the coming El |
| 1:32 | Nino was going to be significantly stronger than originally expected. By August that |
| 1:39 | prediction had changed though. It now looks more like reaching two-point-three degrees |
| 1:42 | Celsius above average by the end of the year, prompting the world’s inherently cautious and |
| 1:47 | conservative weather agencies to predict a VERY strong El Nino event into twenty-twenty-four, |
| 1:53 | triggering what they describe as ‘extreme and potentially destructive weather globally’. |
| 2:00 | So, a combination of record high sea surface temperatures and a very strong El Nino event |
| 2:04 | may be about to give us humans a rather unpleasant sample of the ‘new normal’ as |
| 2:09 | we hurtle towards mid-century. And one of the major threats that these extreme weather events |
| 2:13 | are increasingly exposing, is the fragility and vulnerability of our global food supply network. |
| 2:26 | Hello and welcome to Just Have a Think Now as I’m sure you know, the oceans cover |
| 2:31 | more than seventy percent of Earth’s surface and they’re slower to absorb and release heat than |
| 2:37 | our atmosphere is. That creates what the science bods call “thermal inertia" which mitigates the |
| 2:43 | global average temperature increase across land and sea. In a recent interview with the Guardian, |
| 2:48 | oceanographer and climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, Prof Matthew |
| 2:53 | England explained that heating one cubic metre of air by one degree Celsius takes about two |
| 2:59 | thousand joules of energy. But to heat the same volume of WATER by the SAME AMOUNT requires four |
| 3:06 | million-two-hundred-thousand joules of energy. “By absorbing all this heat,” England says, “the |
| 3:13 | ocean lulls people into a false sense of security that climate change is progressing slowly.” |
| 3:19 | To understand and track the rising energy imbalance in the oceans, |
| 3:22 | studies regularly measure ocean heat content or OHC. In this twenty-twenty-one study, |
| 3:28 | scientists from around the world analysed thousands of global ocean temperature readings, |
| 3:33 | each taken during that year from depths of at least two thousand metres. The paper’s authors |
| 3:39 | found that, despite the cooler La Nina conditions that existed when the research was carried out, |
| 3:44 | ocean temperatures had elevated by about fourteen zettajoules compared to the previous year. |
| 3:51 | A Zettajoule is apparently ten to the power of twenty-one joules of energy which, to be honest, |
| 3:57 | is a number that my limited brain finds extremely difficult to comprehend or imagine. |
| 4:02 | Luckily though, our ever-helpful scientists have crunched the numbers into something a bit |
| 4:06 | more tangible for folks like you and me. So, the twenty-twenty-one temperature increase of fourteen |
| 4:13 | zettajoules turns out to be roughly the equivalent of detonating seven Hiroshima atomic bombs in the |
| 4:19 | ocean every second of every minute of every day, for three hundred and sixty-five days. If that’s |
| 4:26 | not mind blowing enough for you, how about this technical chart published in the last IPCC report |
| 4:32 | showing that between nineteen-seventy-one and twenty-eighteen our oceans absorbed |
| 4:39 | three hundred and ninety-six zettajoules of heat. And the increase in ocean temperature, |
| 4:43 | according to the data, has been accelerating, with the result that, by Spring twenty-twenty-three, |
| 4:49 | we had global sea-surface temperature anomalies that proper, rational, cautious science types |
| 4:55 | were describing with phrases like ‘off the charts’ and “into uncharted territory’. |
| 5:01 | Overlay a strongly warming El Nino event onto that already overheating global system |
| 5:06 | and you’ve got a situation that you need to pay attention to, to say the least. |
| 5:11 | You can get the full low down on how and why the ENSO system works the way it does by jumping back |
| 5:17 | to my previous video, so I won’t repeat all of that here, suffice to say that when El Niño |
| 5:22 | events arise, the interactions between the ocean and atmosphere create temporary changes that are, |
| 5:28 | unsurprisingly, most strongly experienced in the regions closest to it, but that can also have |
| 5:33 | significant and potentially catastrophic impacts on weather systems across most of the globe. |
| 5:38 | The obvious manifestation of all this extra heat is the dramatic increase in extreme weather events |
| 5:43 | that we all now see in our newsfeeds on an almost daily basis. According to the US National Oceanic |
| 5:49 | and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, the United States has already beaten its own record for the |
| 5:55 | most natural disasters causing a billion dollars or more of damage in a single year. And there’s |
| 6:01 | still four months of the year to go! The total cost to the nation so far is almost sixty billion |
| 6:07 | dollars. Similar impacts have been felt in every inhabited continent on the planet, most recently |
| 6:12 | demonstrated by the desperate scenes in Libya that we’re witnessing as I’m making this video |
| 6:17 | in early September. What we humans are less good at focussing on though are the longer-term impacts |
| 6:24 | of those events on our increasingly interconnected and interdependent global food supply network. |
| 6:30 | Even if you’re fortunate enough to avoid six feet of water flooding into your home |
| 6:35 | or a wildfire destroying your entire town, and even if you live in a wealthy western |
| 6:39 | nation with lots of infrastructure and resources for dealing with such events, |
| 6:44 | if food becomes scarce then all sorts of really very unpleasant consequences start kicking in. |
| 6:51 | Much smarter analysts than me tend to use cereal crops like maize, |
| 6:55 | rice and wheat as their barometer for global market stability. This study from July |
| 6:59 | twenty-twenty-two provides us with a nice tangle of spaghetti lines showing how the supply of wheat |
| 7:05 | criss-crosses the planet every day, stabilising each nation’s increasingly wobbly crop yields, |
| 7:11 | providing basic nourishment for more than two-point-five billion human beings, |
| 7:15 | and of course feeding the insatiable modern Mammon of GDP and global economic growth. The paper’s |
| 7:22 | researchers offer us the rather stark conclusion that “Few will remain unaffected by the new global |
| 7:29 | food shock given the highly interconnected nature of contemporary agri-food systems.” |
| 7:35 | Another study, published in December twenty-twenty-two explains that |
| 7:40 | “countries' reliance on global food trade networks implies that regionally different |
| 7:44 | climate change impacts on crop yields will be transmitted across borders.” This redistribution, |
| 7:51 | say the papers authors, “constitutes a significant challenge for climate |
| 7:55 | adaptation planning and may affect how countries engage in cooperative action.” |
| 8:00 | Aaah! ‘co-operative action’…yeah… |
| 8:05 | The paper investigates the long-term potential impacts of climate change on global food trade |
| 8:11 | networks of ALL THREE key crops: wheat, rice AND maize, projecting that major |
| 8:16 | threats to global food security can be brought about by quite modest production changes in |
| 8:21 | just a few major global producers. The big challenge, say the papers authors, |
| 8:26 | is whether the MAIN GLOBAL EXPORTERS WHOSE NAMES ARE SHOWN ON THESE so-called ‘trade communities’ |
| 8:32 | charts can balance production and import losses in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. |
| 8:40 | And it’s not just scientific researchers that are ringing alarm bells either. The |
| 8:45 | data are being very seriously analysed and increasingly applied in the decisions |
| 8:49 | taken by global financial institutions like insurance companies and banks. |
| 8:54 | Here’s a report by none other than Barclays from January twenty-twenty-three. |
| 8:58 | Now, before you start throwing things at the screen and screaming that Barclays are one |
| 9:03 | of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to continuing to |
| 9:06 | invest hundreds of millions of dollars into fossil fuels… I know and I agree. |
| 9:10 | But it would appear that while their investment arm is no paragon of virtue, |
| 9:15 | their actuaries do appear to have cottoned onto the seriousness of the situation. |
| 9:21 | “The current food price volatility” Barclays explains “exposes the |
| 9:25 | fragility of our global food system. Rising food insecurity, social unrest, |
| 9:30 | displacement and migration are all possible effects.” |
| 9:35 | The report explains that a phenomenon known as ‘Heatflation’ has already become part of the |
| 9:41 | agricultural vernacular, describing how higher temperatures lead to smaller harvests and higher |
| 9:46 | prices. 10:00 But, it’s not just extreme heat that hurts crop yields of course. It’s all the |
| 9:51 | severe flooding, more frequent landslides and unexpected frosts that are also causing huge |
| 9:56 | amounts of damage, even in mighty economies like the United States of America and Europe. |
| 10:02 | The floods in Pakistan between July and October last year washed away nearly half that country’s |
| 10:07 | crops, at an estimated cost of two-point-three billion dollars. Vegetable prices spiked by |
| 10:12 | five hundred percent as a result. Drought in the Horn of Africa forced millions of people to |
| 10:17 | migrate in search of food. And here in Europe, record-breaking heatwaves last year in the UK, |
| 10:23 | France, Italy, Spain and Germany did severe damage to summer crops including maize, sunflower and |
| 10:30 | soybeans, all of which has mostly been repeated during this year’s European heatwave as well. |
| 10:35 | The world’s largest food PRODUCER AND largest food IMPORTER, China, experienced extreme heat |
| 10:42 | and a month-long drought during the rainy season in the south, threatening domestic autumn crops, |
| 10:47 | and extreme floods this year which have caused similar levels of damage. |
| 10:52 | According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, |
| 10:56 | sixty-three percent of the damage and loss to major economic sectors from disasters |
| 11:01 | occurring between two-thousand and-eight and twenty-eighteen was shouldered by agriculture, |
| 11:06 | with disaster-related losses recorded in crop and livestock production during that period estimated |
| 11:12 | at two-hundred-and eighty-billion dollars. In the poorest countries, which accounted for almost half |
| 11:18 | of all that impact, lost production translated to seven trillion kilocalories per year, which is the |
| 11:24 | annual food consumption of seven million adults. The Barclays report concludes that the current |
| 11:30 | food crisis is probably the worst in a decade. The authors argue that the |
| 11:34 | consequences of climate change combined with trade restrictions and regional conflict, |
| 11:39 | are rapidly reversing years of progress in the global battle against hunger and poverty. |
| 11:45 | If you live in a net exporting country you may think well, we’ll just have to export |
| 11:50 | less and use the yields to feed our own people - and indeed that is increasingly what’s being |
| 11:54 | discussed. According to Barclays, many countries are responding with policies that amount to food |
| 12:00 | protectionism, which on a global level, they say will only lead to further food insecurity |
| 12:05 | as richer countries outcompete poorer ones in the race for scarce resources. And in any case, |
| 12:12 | in the context of our modern global economic model, reduced exports lead to declining |
| 12:18 | economies, even in rich countries, with all the socio-economic and political problems that I’m |
| 12:23 | sure you don’t need me to bore you with here. This year’s ‘very strong’ El Nino event is, |
| 12:28 | according to the WMO, highly likely to result in twenty-twenty-four becoming the hottest year |
| 12:33 | ever recorded, and the hottest year we modern humans have ever had to contend with. It may |
| 12:38 | even temporarily push the average global surface temperature back up to more than one-point-five |
| 12:42 | degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. And the undeniable consequences have now arrived at |
| 12:49 | our doorstep, even at that relatively modest level of warming. So, the complacency displayed by some |
| 12:54 | commentators who suggest that two or three degrees Celsius of extra warming might be no |
| 12:59 | bad thing for our planet starts to look just a little bit short sighted, don’t you think? |
| 13:05 | Net importer, or net exporter, the message seems to be that we really are all in this together, |
| 13:11 | whether we like it or not. Our economies are inextricably linked, |
| 13:16 | funnily enough just like our oceans and our climate and all of nature’s other calibration |
| 13:21 | systems that have allowed life on this little planet to thrive for millions of years. Knock |
| 13:26 | all that out of kilter, which is what we’re doing at the moment, largely as a result of |
| 13:30 | the greenhouse gas emissions from the production and combustion of fossil fuels, and the delicate |
| 13:36 | balancing act we’ve benefitted so handsomely from is in real danger of collapsing around us. |
| 13:43 | So, plenty to have a think about folks, eh? See you next week. |