A record El Ni単o climate phase will unleash unprecedented heat and extreme weather, and the UK food system is vulnerable, climate minister Katie White told New Scientist.

At the same time, she pushed back against ���panic and fear��� after environment minister Angela Eagle told Britons they should ���store a bit of food that can keep you going for a while��� in case of El Ni単o storms and flooding.

���Look, am I going out and buying loads of extra beans? I���ve always got a few cans of beans, but that���s mainly so I���m ready for when I���ve not had a chance to go to the shop,��� said White. ���So I���m not going out and doing that.���

The UK Met Office, the national weather service, has that the UK is likely to face an unusually warm, wet and stormy autumn and winter due to El Ni単o, which occurs every two to seven years. While late winter in the UK has often been cold and dry during El Ni単o, the current event is so strong that it could remain warm and rainy into spring.

If fields become too muddy, tractors may not be able to sow crops like winter wheat, as happened in the 2023-24 El Ni単o, or the plants could fail to sprout. Continued wet weather could undermine spring barley. Farmers could be forced to spend more on livestock feed and housing, raising meat and dairy prices as well.

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Closer to the tropics, crops like rice could fail due to heat, drought and weakened monsoons. A UK government last week warned that El Ni単o could increase UK prices for imported foods such as rice, cocoa and coffee.油This comes after heatwaves and drought linked to global warming reduced crop yields in the northern hemisphere this summer, resulting in the worst-ever wheat, barley, rape and oat harvest in the UK. 油

���We will have a wetter start to this winter��� On the back of a very dry summer, that is difficult,��� said White. ���The food system is vulnerable.���

Large countries including China, Brazil and Germany have been building up stores of key foods like wheat, rice, corn and sugar. But the UK doesn���t keep substantial public food reserves.

White argued that the UK would be better off helping local farms and groceries to become more resilient to climate shocks. A task force she established that includes military experts and scientists will meet in October to scrutinise readiness for climate security threats, including to food.

���I don���t think we need to be in a position of grain stores, but I do think we do need to be looking at where the vulnerabilities are in the food system and how we support local production in the most sustainable way,��� she said. ���That���s going to be working with farmers and also on local supply chains.���

Farmers will probably have to plant more weather-resistant varieties or different crops entirely, according to at the University of Oxford. The UK also needs to reduce its reliance on imports for 40 per cent of its food. But ���grain storage is definitely part of the answer��� as well, she says.

El Ni単o flooding could also threaten housing and infrastructure, and these risks will continue as climate change makes most of the world warmer and wetter. The UK should not only build anti-flood engineering works such as the Thames Barrier, but also restore ecosystems like wetlands to absorb excess water, said White. Extreme heat, which killed at least 35,000 people in Europe this year, is likely to bake the continent again next summer.

The long-term solution is for the UK and other countries to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said, a goal that right-wing parties have been increasingly attacking in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Yet the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which White is a part of, is reportedly set to the Jackdaw gas field off Scotland, and may consent to the Rosebank oil field as well. These would result in at least 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, equivalent to about three-quarters of the UK���s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

White said she couldn���t comment as the approvals are up to energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but noted that ���oil and gas is part of our mix going forward���.

She argued that the growth of renewable energy, which now generates more than half of UK electricity, would reduce fossil fuel emissions over time, pointing out that the UK has almost as many public electric vehicle chargers as petrol pumps. Her department also just 贈30 million of funding for 1000 community-owned solar, hydro and wind projects.

This month, the UN the world will soon fail the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5属C above pre-industrial levels and will have to rely on CO2 removal ��� ranging from tree planting to carbon-sucking machines ��� to bring temperatures back down in the future. The UK���s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding 贈57 million of research into geoengineering techniques like spreading sun-blocking particles in the atmosphere.

White said the UK has no plans to deploy geoengineering and she is concentrating on reducing climate impacts in the near term.

���My focus as climate minister is��� adaptation and resilience because I know that next summer is likely to be very, very hot,��� she said. ���But also for this winter, how do we accelerate electrification? Because that is the best way to bring people���s bills down.���

Earth has entered an ���era of water bankruptcy��� due to over-consumption and global warming, with 3 in 4 people living in countries that face water shortages, water contamination or drought.

That���s the conclusion of a that has found most regions are overdrawing their annual income of rainwater and snowmelt and dipping into their savings of groundwater, which can take thousands of years to replenish. Seventy per cent of major aquifers are declining. Many of these changes are irreversible.

Two key drivers are agriculture and cities expanding into arid areas, which are getting even drier due to climate change. have appeared in Turkey due to groundwater pumping, while .

���Our checking account, the surface water��� is now empty,��� says the report���s author, at the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and 91弼秤頭. ���The savings account that we inherited from our ancestors, the groundwater, glaciers and so on ��� they���re also drained now. We are seeing symptoms around the world ��� of water bankruptcy.���

About , fuelling migration, conflicts and unrest. Madani, who was formerly deputy head of Iran���s Department of Environment, says water shortages contributed to the recent bloody protests there, although a currency collapse was the immediate trigger.

, while a rash of dams and wells for farming have ��� once the largest lake in the Middle East ��� and depleted most of the country���s groundwater. The government has mooted evacuating Tehran and is trying to induce rainfall through cloud seeding.

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In the US, the flow of the Colorado river, which provides water to much of the West, has decreased by an estimated , due largely to lower precipitation and increased evaporation. But it is also being overly diverted to , all while cities like Los Angeles rely on it for drinking water. As with a rising number of rivers, it no longer reaches the sea.

The river���s two major reservoirs are at about 30 per cent capacity and could reach ���dead pool��� levels at 10 to 15 per cent of capacity as soon as 2027, according to at Colorado State University. Talks over how much each state would reduce consumption broke down last year.

Increasing agricultural water efficiency has been shown to only increase water use, since drip or sprinkler irrigation allows water to be gradually absorbed by plants, whereas the flooding of fields results in more water running back into the river. So it needs to be coupled with cuts in water consumption, according to Udall.

���The solution is going to have to come from agriculture primarily because they use 70 per cent of the water,��� he says. ���Ag cutbacks, that���s what we���re talking about, and that���s true worldwide.���

is in areas with declining water storage. But reducing agriculture���s water use will also require economic diversification, since it is the . Most of them are in lower-income countries, which often export food to the service economies of higher-income nations.

���Water plays a major role in economies��� because it puts people [in] jobs,��� says Madani. ���If they lose their jobs, what happens is what you see in Iran today.���

Even in rainy places, more water is being sucked up by data centres or polluted by industry, sewage, fertilisers or manure. Wetlands covering an area the size of the European Union have been lost, mostly due to conversion to agriculture, costing the world an estimated like flood buffering, food production and carbon storage.

In Bangladesh, about half the country has due to sea level rise and saltwater intrusion. Meanwhile, the tap water and the ���dead river��� in the capital Dhaka have been poisoned by chemicals from the production of fast fashion for sale in Europe and North America.

���Every person knows that the rivers are being polluted because of the garment industry,��� says at the University of Oxford. ���But they know that stringent regulation, if applied, would��� scare away the buyers.���

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In many cases, rivers, lakes, wetlands and aquifers will never return to their previous state. Moreover, , shrinking water supplies to hundreds of millions of people.

Humanity will have to learn to live with less water, according to Madani. With better water management, that���s possible. First, however, most countries need to simply start accounting for their water sources and consumption, starting with water meters in homes, wells and diversion canals.

���You���re thinking about launching a [cloud-seeding] rocket to get water, but you don���t even know how much water you have in your system,��� says Madani. ���We cannot manage what we do not measure.���

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