Search

Scientists Predict Top Crops of the Future for the UK Based on Climate Change

We are an online community created around a smart and easy to access information hub which is focused on providing proven global and local insights about sustainability

28 Jan, 2025

This post was originally published on Eco Watch

In a new study, scientists analyzed UK crops and how the country’s agriculture could be affected by climate change and predicted what could be the top crops by 2080.

Led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) in collaboration with the University of East Anglia (UEA), the study determined that a changing climate could mean that the UK will become more suitable for growing crops like soy, chickpeas, grapes, oranges and okra.

“Our climate is expected to change substantially over coming decades at a time when there will be rising demand for food due to population growth,” John Redhead, a spatial ecologist at UKCEH, said in a statement. “It is therefore essential that arable farming becomes more resilient; one possible solution is growing different crops that are more suited to the new local conditions.”

At the same time, the region could become less suitable to growing its current crops, including oats, wheat, onions and strawberries, meaning agriculture could face significant challenges and high costs to adapt to growing different crops.

Scientists explored how suitable 160 different crops — both currently grown in the UK and ones that would be new to the area — could be under two different scenarios: 2 degrees Celsius warming and 4 degrees Celsius warming compared to pre-industrial levels.

Under the 2-degree scenario, strawberries and onions would become less suitable to growing in the UK, while in the 4-degree scenario, strawberries, onions, wheat, oats, and apples could see declining suitability for growing in various parts of the UK.

Some current UK crops would become more suitable in both scenarios, including maize and broad beans. New crops that could become more suitable for growing include sorghum, okra, horseradish, chickpeas, soy beans and even avocado (in a 4-degree scenario). The scientists published their findings in the journal Climate Resilience and Sustainability.

As the study pointed out, introducing more crops and diversifying local agriculture could improve soil health and lead to improved natural pest and disease control; plus, high suitability for proteins like soy beans and chickpeas could reduce meat consumption and related emissions. 

However, the team explained that introducing non-native crops could also lead to reverse effects, meaning these new plantings could lead to risks of new pests, disease outbreaks and negative impacts to pollinators. Transitioning to planting different crops would also come with high economic costs.

“Clearly, it’s unlikely to be feasible just to switch large-scale food production from Britain’s agricultural heartlands of southeastern England to Scotland, for example,” Redhead explained. “However, climate change is happening now, and its impacts will increase by 2080, so whatever action is taken will involve big challenges in terms of where our food comes from and the way our agricultural landscapes are managed.”

Already, extreme weather events linked to climate change are affecting agriculture in the UK and around the world. From October 2022 to March 2024, the UK recorded the wettest 18 months on record, as reported by Yale Climate Connections. According to UK’s House of Parliament, extreme levels of rainfall and flooding over the past two years could lead to decreased crop yields, including for staples like broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes and carrots, in 2025.

In February 2023, major supermarkets in the UK had to ration some produce, including tomatoes, lettuce and peppers, due to low supplies from extreme weather. The weather included higher-than-usual snow and rainfall in countries that UK sources some of its fruits and vegetables from in the winter months.

Depleted vegetable shelves at a supermarket in Manchester, Britain on March 2, 2023. Jon Super / Xinhua via Getty Images

In fall 2024, the UK reported its second-worst harvest season ever recorded, with crops like wine grapes, wheat, barley, oats and oilseed rape all experiencing declining yields because of periods of flooding and drought throughout the year.

It’s uncertain what the future of farming in the UK will look like, but with impacts from climate change already affecting crops, the agriculture industry will need to consider ways to build resiliency in the face of these changes.

“Major changes to agricultural systems and diets can take decades to implement and so our long-term projections provide important information well ahead of time for farmers, supermarkets, researchers, policymakers and the public on the opportunities, challenges and trade-offs involved in adapting to the impacts of climate change,” said Rachel Warren, co-author of the study and professor at UEA’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

The post Scientists Predict Top Crops of the Future for the UK Based on Climate Change appeared first on EcoWatch.

Pass over the stars to rate this post. Your opinion is always welcome.
[Total: 0 Average: 0]

You may also like…

‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’

‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’

In the introduction to Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin’s new book, Poisoning The Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, the authors cite an alarming statistic from 2015 that PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are present in the bodies of an estimated 97% of Americans. How did we ever get to this point? Their book is […]
The post ‘Poisoning the Well’ Authors Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin on PFAS Contamination and Why It ‘Has Not Received the Attention It Deserves’ appeared first on EcoWatch.

The Rise of Chemical Recycling: What Recyclers Should Know

The Rise of Chemical Recycling: What Recyclers Should Know

During WWII, plastic appeared as a “material with 1,000 uses.” Fast forward to today, when global production of plastic has surpassed 359 million tons. While plastic has been helpful in many areas, it’s also created problems within the environment. Microscopic particles of plastic are in the soil, air, and water. They’re in animals, fish, and […]
The post The Rise of Chemical Recycling: What Recyclers Should Know appeared first on RecycleNation.

Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

Turning down the heat: how innovative cooling techniques are tackling the rising costs of AI's energy demands

As enterprises accelerate their AI investments, the energy demand of AI’s power-hungry systems is worrying both the organisations footing the power bills as well as those tasked with supplying reliable electricity. From large language models to digital twins crunching massive datasets to run accurate simulations on complex city systems, AI workloads require a tremendous amount of processing power.

Of course, at the heart of this demand are data centres, which are evolving at breakneck speed to support AI’s growing potential. The International Energy Agency’s AI and Energy Special Report recently predicted that data centre electricity consumption will double by 2030, identifying AI as the most significant driver of this increase.1

The IT leaders examining these staggering predictions are rightly zeroing in on improving the efficiency of these powerful systems. However, the lack of expertise in navigating these intricate systems, combined with the rapidity of innovative developments, is causing heads to spin. Although savvy organisations are baking efficiency considerations into IT projects at the outset, and are looking across the entire AI life cycle for opportunities to minimise impact, many don’t know where to start or are leaving efficiency gains on the table. Most are underutilising the multiple IT efficiency levers that could be pulled to reduce the environmental footprint of their IT, such as using energy-efficient software languages and optimising data use to ensure maximum data efficiency of AI workloads. Among the infrastructure innovations, one of the most exciting advancements we are seeing in data centres is direct liquid cooling (DLC). Because the systems that are running AI workloads are producing more heat, traditional air cooling simply is not enough to keep up with the demands of the superchips in the latest systems.

DLC technology pumps liquid coolants through tubes in direct contact with the processors to dissipate heat and has been proven to keep high-powered AI systems running safely. Switching to DLC has had measurable and transformative impact across multiple environments, showing reductions in cooling power consumption by nearly 90% compared to air cooling in supercomputing systems2.

Thankfully, the benefits of DLC are now also extending beyond supercomputers to reach a broader range of higher-performance servers that support both supercomputing and AI workloads. Shifting DLC from a niche offering to a more mainstream option available across more compute systems is enabling more organisations to tap into the efficiency gains made possible by DLC, which in some cases has been shown to deliver up to 65% in annual power savings3. Combining this kind of cooling innovation with new and improved power-use monitoring tools, able report highly accurate and timely insights, is becoming critical for IT teams wanting to optimise their energy use. All this is a welcome evolution for organisations grappling with rising energy costs and that are carefully considering total cost of ownership (TCO) of their IT systems, and is an area of innovation to watch in the coming years.

In Australia, this kind of technical innovation is especially timely. In March 2024, the Australian Senate established the Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence to examine the opportunities and impacts of AI technologies4. Among its findings and expert submissions was a clear concern about the energy intensity of AI infrastructure. The committee concluded that the Australian Government legislate for increased regulatory clarity, greater energy efficiency standards, and increased investment in renewable energy solutions. For AI sustainability to succeed, it must be driven by policy to set actionable standards, which then fuel innovative solutions.

Infrastructure solutions like DLC will play a critical role in making this possible — not just in reducing emissions and addressing the energy consumption challenge, but also in supporting the long-term viability of AI development across sectors. We’re already seeing this approach succeed in the real world. For example, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia has adopted DLC technology to support its demanding research workloads and, in doing so, has significantly reduced energy consumption while maintaining the high performance required for AI and scientific computing. It’s a powerful example of how AI data centres can scale sustainably — and telegraphs an actionable blueprint for others to follow.

Furthermore, industry leaders are shifting how they handle the heat generated by these large computing systems in order to drive further efficiency in AI. Successfully using heat from data centres for other uses will be a vital component to mitigating both overall energy security risks and the efficiency challenges that AI introduces. Data centres are being redesigned to capture by-product heat and use it as a valuable resource, rather than dispose of it as waste heat. Several industries are already benefiting from capturing data centre heat, such as in agriculture for greenhouses, or heating buildings in healthcare and residential facilities. This has been successfully implemented in the UK with the Isambard-AI supercomputer and in Finland with the LUMI supercomputer — setting the bar for AI sustainability best practice globally.

The message is clear: as AI becomes a bigger part of digital transformation projects, so too must the consideration for resource-efficient solutions grow. AI sustainability considerations must be factored into each stage of the AI life cycle, with solutions like DLC playing a part in in a multifaceted IT sustainability blueprint.

By working together with governments to set effective and actionable environmental frameworks and benchmarks, we can encourage the growth and evolution of the AI industry, spurring dynamic innovation in solutions and data centre design for the benefit of all.

1. AI is set to drive surging electricity demand from data centres while offering the potential to transform how the energy sector works – News – IEA
2. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/blog-post/2024/08/liquid-cooling-a-cool-approach-for-ai.html
3. HPE introduces next-generation ProLiant servers engineered for advanced security, AI automation and greater performance
4. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Adopting_Artificial_Intelligence_AI

Image credit: iStock.com/Dragon Claws

0 Comments