Climate change linked to decline in nutritional quality of food

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Vice President of Forecast Operations Dan DePodwin and AccuWeather Climate Expert Brett Anderson discuss the top headlines related to climate change in the July 18 edition of Climate In The News.

Transcript

00:00We're covering two climate stories today, all things green.

00:04We'll talk about plants and trees.

00:06Brett, our first story from food manufacturing about the impacts of climate change and the

00:11nutritional quality of the foods we eat, specifically different types of crops.

00:15Yes, a study looked at leafy greens such as spinach and kale and wanted to see what the

00:22impact of higher CO2 and more extreme temperatures, higher temperatures had on those crops.

00:28What they found was, part of that was expected, Dan, higher plant growth, but the nutritional

00:35level decreased.

00:37And nutritional value, obviously a significant part of the food we eat.

00:40A lot of studies had looked at the crop yield.

00:42This one looked at the nutritional value, specifically for kale, arugula, and spinach, three types of

00:47vegetables.

00:48What types of details did they find about the nutrition of these crops?

00:53Yeah.

00:54When they applied extreme temperatures, what they saw was a decrease in key minerals such

00:59as calcium.

01:00Also, antioxidant levels were lowered.

01:03And when you combined increased CO2 with heat stress, they saw slower growth rates with

01:09that and also a decrease, once again, in nutrition.

01:12Yeah.

01:13Increased sugar is not a good thing.

01:14I think that was also found and that's definitely a potential impact on health that could increase

01:19the risk for type 2 diabetes potentially.

01:22So certainly a very interesting finding and a new way to look at food being impacted by

01:26climate change.

01:27Our second study today, this is from Boston University, this study looked at the impact

01:33of climate change and snowpack on how trees absorb carbon across New England.

01:37Yeah.

01:38So New England temperate forest here, typically, as we've been talking about, increased CO2 means

01:44plants will grow more and larger and faster.

01:48But they wanted to look at what is the impact of snowpack on these trees.

01:53And what they found was less snowpack during the winter has a significant impact on the growth

01:59of trees.

02:00And that's also going to affect how much carbon they take up.

02:03And so when there's less snowpack, you seem to get more freeze-thaw cycles and that actually

02:07slows the growth of the trees.

02:08How did they do this study to find out these results?

02:10Yeah.

02:11It's interesting.

02:12They used heated plots in a big chamber.

02:14They grew the trees.

02:15And so with the increased heat, Dan, the trees all grew faster than normal.

02:19But what they found was the trees that were insulated with snow and ice grew about 63% larger,

02:25faster versus 31% with no snow.

02:29Yeah, so if there's less snowpack in the future with climate change, there may be slower growth

02:34or there may not be as much growth of these trees that we had previously thought because

02:37we believe that warmer summers will allow for further growth.

02:40Yeah, and models may be overestimating the carbon uptake of these trees, especially in

02:44the Northeast.

02:45Yeah, so the overestimate is certainly an issue and something more to study in terms

02:48of how trees grow and how that growth impacts the amount of carbon they absorb.

02:52Thank you, Brett.

02:53For more stories about climate and other information, you can find that at accuweather.com slash climate.

02:59Yeah.

03:00That's pretty cool.

03:01Now, buddy, this one's trying to Pastor you get a little bit deeper because you would

03:02have more questions.

03:02Please feel free to struggle.

03:03Let me come back.

03:04Alright.

03:07Let's go back.

03:08Here we are a few.

03:12Keep both of us going back.

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