Wet

Wettest 18 month period on record between October 2022 to March 2024. Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK winters have become 1C warmer and 15% wetter in the past century.

Pests

Animal pests such as ticks or liver fluke are already reported to be increasing in the UK and continental Europe, with many species of insects native to southern parts of Europe now being detected due to warmer winters in northern parts of the continent. (FSA, 2023)

Heatwaves

In 2022, the heatwave which saw UK temperatures hit 40C for the first time, in some cases setting farmers fields ablaze. An analysis by a team of UK academics on behalf of World Weather Attribution concluded that climate change made the heatwave 10 times more likely.

Factory farmed chickens and pigs are vulnerable to heat stress. Confined in sweltering industrial units in high numbers, unable to use dust bathing or mud wallowing to cool themselves (neither species has the ability to cool themselves by sweating), many die under extreme heat. During the 2022 heat wave, an estmated 18,500 chickens died on the way to slaughterhouses alone.

Misc

As a consequence of unusual weather patterns associated with climate change, wheat yields in 2018 were 7% below the 2016 to 2020 average, and in 2020 were 17% below that average. Ozone in the low atmosphere has a separate, ongoing effect on yields; total economic losses for wheat, potato, and oilseed rape in the UK caused by damage due to ozone may have been over £185 million in 2018.

For example, surface Ozone (O3) poses significant threats to crops. Current losses are estimated to be around 3.6% for maize, 2.6% for rice, 6.7% for soybean, and 7.2% for wheat. It is predicted that this is likely to increase further in the future due to global warming and more anthropogenic emissions of O3 precursors including nitrogen oxides (NOx), methane (CH4) and carbon monoxide (CO) (Tai et al., 2021). (FSA, 2023)