The world is getting too hot to feed itself, Grist Ayurella Horn-Muller A new U.N. report maps how extreme heat is tearing through every layer of the global food system — and mostly overlooks the people at the heart of it. Two years ago today, an intense heat wave engulfed much of Brazil. For five days at the end of April 2024, temperatures in the central and southern regions climbed to sweltering heights. Many affected were still reeling from another extreme heat wave that had walloped southern Brazil. Just the month before the heat index in Rio de Janeiro reached a staggering 144.1 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest in a decade.  The two events were part of a cycle of prolonged and severe periods of heat that hit one of the world’s largest agricultural powerhouses over several years. Yields of soy and corn, two of Brazil’s biggest commodities, fell in southeastern states like São Paulo. Peanuts, potatoes, sugarcane, and arabica coffee also suffered widespread losses. Droves of livestock pigs in the central-western region were afflicted with severe heat stress for the better part of a year. And when an atmospheric cold front was blocked by the prevailing heat dome and triggered devastating rainfall and flooding throughout the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, the supply chain and markets for pink shrimp were disrupted throughout Brazil.

 Much of this data is documented in a new joint report released last Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Merging weather datasets with agricultural ones, the report traces the compounding effects of extreme heat on the global agricultural system and outlines how to produce food in a world where extreme heat is becoming a baseline. In the report, Brazil is the sole country-level case study explored in detail; the country’s exports face outsize pressure from warming temperatures and the oscillating extremes of natural weather cycles El Niño and La Niña. But a few dozen other nations are mentioned in the 94-page document, too. 

The authors cite how, in Chile, warming seas in 2016 prompted massive algae blooms that killed off an estimated 100,000 tonnes of farmed salmon and trout, creating the largest aquaculture mortality event in history. In the United States’ Pacific Northwest, when one of the strongest heat waves ever recorded struck in 2021, entire raspberry and blackberry harvests were lost, Christmas tree farms saw 70% timber volume declines, and the intersection of extreme heat, vegetative drying, and wildfires led to an increase of between 21 and 24% of forest area burned in North America that year. After a record heatwave hit India in 2022, wheat in over a third of Indian states fell anywhere between 9 and 34%, dairy animals afflicted with heat stress produced up to 15% less milk, and some cabbage and cauliflower yields were halved. And last spring in Kyrgyzstan’s Fergana mountain range, a region known for its year-round snow, spring temperatures rose 10°C higher than the seasonal average—a bout of weather so unusual that it contributed to a locust outbreak and dramatic declines in cereal harvests.

Human-caused warming has already been increasing at an unprecedented rate. The past 11 years are also the 11 warmest years on record. “We’re not moving at a speed that is good enough,” said Martial Bernoux, senior natural resources officer at the FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Environment. “And we have, really, a residual risk that is increasing.”On a high-emissions trajectory, much of South Asia, tropical Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Central and South America could experience as many as 250 days a year that are simply too hot to work outside by the close of the century, according to the report. 

Dangerous exposure to heat is already an occupational crisis for much of the world’s agricultural workforce. A 2024 report by the International Labour Organization found that extreme temperatures had put more than 70% of the global workforce, or some 2.4 billion people, at high risk. Those findings spurred a call to action on extreme heat by António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, in the summer of 2024. He urged governments and the international community to prioritize four areas: caring for the most vulnerable; stepping up protections for workers exposed to excessive heat; boosting resilience using data and science; and quickly and equitably phasing out fossil fuels. 

“Heat is estimated to kill almost half a million people a year,” said Guterres at the time. “That’s about 30 times more than tropical cyclones. We know what is driving it: fossil fuel-charged, human-induced climate change. And we know it’s going to get worse.”According to Bernoux, the joint FAO-WMO analysis is a direct response to the UN Secretary-General’s call to action. “The UN said, ‘We have a problem,’” said Bernoux. “So FAO and WMO, we decided to work together to be able to reply to that.”Naia Ormaza Zulueta, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia studying extreme heat and the agricultural workforce, questions whether their report focuses enough on the people who grow, harvest, and raise the world’s food......read on https://www.theenergymix.com/the-world-is-getting-too-hot-to-feed-itself/   

Reduced physical activity due to global heating will lead to rise in health issues, study says. Guardian Chloe Farrand 16 Mar 2026 Researchers project that reduced activity could contribute to half a million additional premature deaths annually by 2050. Rising temperatures are making physical activity undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and as global heating worsens, it will further affect how much people are able to move. Researchers analysed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and modelled how rising temperatures may affect physical activity globally by 2050.They found that each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8C would increase physical inactivity by an average of 1.5 percentage points globally, with an even higher increase of 1.85 points in low and middle-income countries.

 Christian García-Witulski, a research fellow at the Lancet Physical inactivity increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers and mental health disorders, all of which shorten life expectancy, said the study’s lead author, Countdown Latin America and a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. Reduced physical activity is already a big global health problem and is responsible for an estimated 5% of all adult deaths, according to the study, which was published in the Lancet Global Health journal. About a third of the world’s population fails to meet World Health Organization guidelines for weekly exercise.The study projects that the increase in physical inactivity could contribute to about half a million additional premature deaths annually and $2.4bn – $3.68bn in productivity losses by 2050.

The biggest increases in inactivity are projected to be in hotter regions such as Central America, the Caribbean, eastern sub-Saharan Africa, and equatorial south-east Asia, where inactivity could rise by more than four percentage points a month. “This is not just a climate story, it is also an inequality story. The places expected to face the greatest increases in climate-driven inactivity are often the same places with fewer resources to adapt,” said García-Witulski. “In settings where people have less access to cooling, fewer safe indoor alternatives, and less flexibility in their daily schedules, heat appears more likely to translate into reduced physical activity.” The model also predicted a bigger increase in inactivity among women, which could reflect physiological differences as well as social factors, such as less time and access to cool places for exercise, said García-Witulski......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/16/reduced-physical-activity-due-to-global-heating-rise-health-issues-study