EVEN BEER THREATENED BY CLIMATE CHANGE

Guardian, UK - A team at the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute has just published a study in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology which concludes that "even with the modest warming so far experienced, [hop] yields [in the Czech Republic] have stagnated and quality declined." Yields have already been affected as air temperatures have slowly risen over the previous five decades, say the scientists, and they predict that future warming could reduce yields by a further 7-10%. . . It's not the first time that climatologists have expressed concern about the impact of climate change on beer production . . . In 2008, a researcher at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand told a conference of beer industry representatives that rising temperatures may threaten beer production. That time it was malting barley that was identified as being particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.