Promises to improve the UK’s food security feature in the election manifestos that have been published ahead of the vote on 4 July.
The Conservatives say they can provide a future where “national, border, energy and food security are put first”. Labour says that “food security is national security”.
Food supplies have been impacted by geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather events and rising costs around the world in recent months.
The UK government recently described its food security situation as “broadly stable”, but that it is facing “longer-term risks” from climate change.
Food security is “very low on the political agenda”, a food policy expert tells Carbon Brief, adding that “politicians really don’t yet get how important and how fragile the food system is”.
Below, Carbon Brief examines the range of factors tying into the UK’s food security, how they are impacted by climate change and how some of the biggest parties discuss these issues.
- How food secure is the UK?
- What have UK political parties pledged on food security?
- How does climate change impact food security?
- How can the UK food system better prepare for shocks?
How food secure is the UK?
In a broad sense, food security refers to people in a particular country or region having enough access to food.
This is achieved when “all people, at all times” have access to enough “safe and nutritious food” to meet their needs and preferences for an “active and healthy life”, according to a definition agreed at a 1996 World Food Summit.
Sufficient “access” to food depends on a number of different factors, including costs, supply, types of food, nutritional needs and where the food comes from. These factors vary on a national and local level.
Food security in the UK is “broadly stable”, according to the government’s first food security index released last month. However, this follows a “challenging period of global supply chain shocks”.
The government says that this stability should also be taken in the context of “longer-term risk from climate change”. (See: How does climate change impact food security?)
In terms of food supply, it says that the ratio of food produced in the UK to food imported from other countries was “broadly stable” in 2022, which is the most recent data available.
The UK produced 60% of its own food and 73% of “indigenous foods” that are natively grown, such as carrots and onions. This was a drop of 1% in each case compared to 2021.
Overall, the UK imports around 40% of its food, the government notes. As the chart below shows, these imports come from a range of countries, including the Netherlands, France and Ireland.
The UK produces most of the cereals, meat, dairy and eggs eaten by people across the country. It is much more reliant on imported fruit and vegetables than any other type of food, which is a similar situation to Ireland.
The chart below outlines the “production to supply ratio” of raw foods. The figures indicate, as a percentage, how much of each of the consumed food types are produced in the UK. So, for example, the UK produces 17% of the fruit and 55% of the vegetables it consumes. In contrast, the UK produces more lamb and milk than it consumes.
Different foods are imported from different countries around the world, such as citrus fruits from Spain, tomatoes from the Netherlands and India, and rice from Pakistan.
Supplies can, therefore, be hit by extreme weather abroad. This has happened numerous times, including when cold weather in Spain and Morocco led to severe shortages of lettuce, tomatoes and other crops in the spring of 2023.
In terms of production, the balance between home-grown and imported food is “integral to UK food security” as the country’s climate is unsuitable for products such as rice, bananas and tea, the government index says.
It adds that the government is “not complacent” about food security risks, especially from global “volatility”, climate change and biodiversity loss – all of which have “intensified” in recent years, it notes.
Another key aspect of food security is affordability. Food prices have risen substantially around the world in recent years.
Carbon Brief recently spoke to a range of scientists and policy experts about the reasons for this, which include geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather events, high input costs and increased demand.
In the UK, the overall cost of food and non-alcoholic drinks increased by 25% between January 2022 to January 2024, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Around half of the respondents to a Food Standards Agency survey of the general public said they are “highly concerned” about the affordability of food. This figure doubled over the course of three years – from 26% in 2020 to 51% in 2023.
The percentage of survey respondents classified as “food insecure” stood at 25% by January 2023. Food insecurity means having limited or uncertain access to adequate amounts of food, the FSA says.
These results show that “the majority of people are worried about food prices”, the FSA chief Emily Miles said in a statement.
Prof Tim Lang, an emeritus professor of food policy at City University of London, says that food security is “very low on the political agenda” in the UK. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Politicians really don’t yet get how important and how fragile the food system is and its reliance on not just fossil fuels, but over half a century of investment into a particular model of efficiency which has all been about cutting options, cutting slackness, or perceived slackness, in the food system.”
What have UK political parties pledged on food security?
In an interactive manifesto tracker, Carbon Brief recently examined the pledges made by the UK’s main political parties ahead of the election.
Both the Conservative government and the Labour opposition have been criticised by farming and food industry groups for not going far enough in their plans on food and agriculture.
The Conservatives say they can provide a future where “national, border, energy and food security are put first”. They pledge to introduce a legally binding target to enhance the UK’s food security.
They also pledge to deliver the goal for at least half of the money spent on food in schools, hospitals and other public sector services to be used for food produced locally or to “higher environmental production standards”.
This proposal from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs defined “locally produced” as food that is grown or made in the same region, or a neighbouring county, as it is consumed.
These “higher” standards of production include organic farms or farmlands showing integrated management of natural habitats and biodiversity, soil management, pollution control and nature conservation.
Queries from Carbon Brief to the Conservative press office asking for more detail on their food security policies were left unanswered.
Labour’s manifesto says that “food security is national security” and that the party will “champion British farming whilst protecting the environment”.
Similar to the Conservative goal, the party will set a target to produce half of food purchased in the public sector either locally or in a way that is “certified to higher environmental standards”.
Carbon Brief’s request for more detail on this policy from the Labour press office also went unanswered.
A letter from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), the British Retail Consortium and other groups to the leaders of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties criticised the lack of focus on food security in their manifestos, the Guardian reported last week.
The letter said the groups “heard very little about food security” compared to defence and energy security in recent weeks, the newspaper said. It added:
“The lack of focus on food in the political narrative during the campaigns demonstrates a worrying blind spot for those that would govern us.”
The Conservative manifesto pledges to increase the UK’s farming budget by £1bn over the term of the next parliament.
Labour committed to maintaining England’s post-Brexit funding programme, the Environmental Land Management Schemes (read Carbon Brief’s Q&A here), but did not explicitly mention the UK’s agricultural budget.
NFU president Tom Bradshaw described this as “concerning”, the Daily Express reported. He told the outlet:
“Looking at the profitability of the farming sector, it’s on a knife edge.”
The Scottish National Party does not directly mention food security in its manifesto. It discusses agricultural funding, saying that the devolved Scottish government has received “no commitment from Westminster on any future funding for farming after 2025”.
The SNP calls for the UK government to increase farm funding and provide “certainty through multi-annual funding frameworks”.
The Liberal Democrats has pledged to introduce a “holistic and comprehensive national food strategy to ensure food security” alongside tackling food prices, ending food poverty and improving health and nutrition.
The party also promises to put an extra £1bn per year towards England’s Environmental Land Management Schemes.
How does climate change impact food security?
Extreme weather can harm food supply and production, therefore impacting food security.
Heatwaves destroy crops and endanger agricultural workers. Heavy rainfall floods fields. Drought reduces crop yields. Climate change is a key driver in the increasing frequency and severity of these extremes.
Farmers in the UK have recently been affected by “soggy and turbulent weather”, Bloomberg reported.
The UK had its eighth-wettest winter on record last year and a wetter-than-normal spring. Carbon Brief analysis shows that UK winters have become 1C warmer and 15% wetter in the past century.
Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that there could be food shortages and price rises due to this extreme weather.
This could lead to more shipments from abroad, but the newspaper said that “similarly wet conditions in European countries such as France and Germany, as well as drought in Morocco, could mean there is less food to import”.
In 2022, the heatwave which saw UK temperatures hit 40C for the first time pushed farmers “closer to the brink”, the Daily Telegraph reported at the time.
The hot, dry weather in July left farmers “watering crops which wouldn’t normally need watering such as sugar beet and maize”, the newspaper said, while “industry chiefs warned that very hot and sunny days were starting to stress apple trees and scorch fruit”.
It added that “fears that high temperatures will damage this year’s harvest in Britain, Europe and North America sent crop prices 7% higher last week, the biggest jump since the early days of the conflict in Ukraine”.
A rapid attribution analysis suggested that human-caused climate change had made the UK’s record-breaking heatwave at least 10 times more likely. A separate study found that climate change had made the droughts across the northern hemisphere in 2022 at least 20 times more likely.
Speaking to Carbon Brief for a recent article, Prof Andy Challinor, a professor of climate impacts at the University of Leeds, said that “climate change is beginning to outpace us because it is interacting with our complex interrelated economic and food systems”.
He added that the way food systems have been set up “has huge implications for stability and resilience – or lack thereof”.
Lang tells Carbon Brief that there is some “lip service [and] some good initiatives” to address risks from climate change and biodiversity loss, but he adds:
“There are great things going on, but they are small compared to the enormous change that needs to happen.”
How can the UK food system better prepare for shocks?
Lang says the next UK government has a “horrendous task” in tackling issues such as extreme weather, global shocks and other impacts negatively affecting food production.
He has been working on a report about UK food security and preparing for food shocks for the National Preparedness Commission, an independent body that promotes policies to prepare the UK for shocks. This is due to be released by the end of this summer.
Lang believes that a system change is necessary to deal with the range of different shocks and to tackle the food system’s contribution to climate change.
The global food system is responsible for around one-third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Within this, as much as half of those emissions come from rotted or otherwise wasted food, a 2023 study found.
In the UK, 12% of all greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. Livestock is by far the biggest contributor to these emissions, as shown in the chart below.
Around 70% of the UK’s land is used for agriculture. Globally, half of all liveable land is used for agriculture.
England’s National Food Strategy, published a few years ago, called for a rural land-use strategy to figure out the best ways to use land for nature, carbon sequestration, agriculture and other purposes.
The UK is due to release its delayed land-use report for England later this year. Before the general election was called, a conservative peer said the report would be published before the parliament’s summer recess.
A spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs declined to comment on the current status of this report as it is an issue for the next government.
Food security should be a “central tenet” of this framework, the UK parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee said in December 2023.
The chart below highlights how land is currently allocated in the UK (left) and how much overseas land is used to produce food for the UK (right).
On next steps, Lang says that he would like to see a number of actions from the next government on food security. He tells Carbon Brief:
“We need a national council of food policy. We need to have high priority to agri-food reform. We have got to actually start a programme of educating and teaching people better how to do things. We have got to get a grip on the runaway food manufacturing industry.
“At the moment, the politics of food is just blame. And blame doesn’t get political change.”
The post Q&A: The state of the UK’s ‘food security’ in a fast-warming world appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: The state of the UK’s ‘food security’ in a fast-warming world
In 2026, the dangers of fossil fuel dependence have been laid bare like never before. The illegal invasion of Iran has brought pain and destruction to millions across the Middle East and triggered a global energy crisis impacting us all. Communities in the Pacific have been hit especially hard by rising fuel prices, and Australians have seen their cost-of-living woes deepen.
Such moments of crisis and upheaval can lead to positive transformation. But only when leaders act with courage and foresight.
There is no clearer statement of a government’s plans and priorities for the nation than its budget — how it plans to raise money, and what services, communities, and industries it will invest in.
As we count down the days to the 2026-27 Federal Budget, will the Albanese Government deliver a budget for our times? One that starts breaking the shackles of fossil fuels, accelerates the shift to clean energy, protects nature, and sees us work together with other countries towards a safer future for all? Or one that doubles down on coal and gas, locks in more climate chaos, and keeps us beholden to the whims of tyrants and billionaires.
Here’s what we think the moment demands, and what we’ll be looking out for when Treasurer Jim Chalmers steps up to the dispatch box on 12 May.
1. Stop fuelling the fire
2. Make big polluters pay
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
4. Build the industries of the future
5. Build community resilience
6. Be a better neighbour
7. Protect nature
1. Stop fuelling the fire
In mid-April, Pacific governments and civil society met to redouble their efforts towards a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Moving beyond coal, oil and gas is fundamental to limiting warming to 1.5°C — a survival line for vulnerable communities and ecosystems. And as our Head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, explained, it is “also a path of liberation that frees us from expensive, extractive and polluting fossil fuel imports and uplifts our communities”.
Pacific countries are at the forefront of growing global momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels, and it is way past time for Australia to get with the program. It is no longer a question of whether fossil fuel extraction will end, but whether that end will be appropriately managed and see communities supported through the transition, or whether it will be chaotic and disruptive.
So will this budget support the transition away from fossil fuels, or will it continue to prop up coal and gas?
When it comes to sensible moves the government can make right now, one stands out as a genuine low hanging fruit. Mining companies get a full rebate of the excise (or tax) that the rest of us pay on diesel fuel. This lowers their operating costs and acts as a large, ongoing subsidy on fossil fuel production — to the tune of $11 billion a year!
Greenpeace has long called for coal and gas companies to be removed from this outdated scheme, and for the billions in savings to be used to support the clean energy transition and to assist communities with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Will we see the government finally make this long overdue change, or will it once again cave to the fossil fuel lobby?
2. Make big polluters pay
While our communities continue to suffer the escalating costs of climate-fuelled disasters, our Government continues to support a massive expansion of Australia’s export gas industry. Gas is a dangerous fossil fuel, with every tonne of Australian gas adding to the global heating that endangers us all.
Moreover, companies like Santos and Woodside pay very little tax for the privilege of digging up and selling Australians’ natural endowment of fossil gas. Remarkably, the Government currently raises more tax from beer than from the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) — the main tax on gas profits.
Momentum has been building to replace or supplement the PRRT with a 25% tax on gas exports. This could raise up to $17 billion a year — funds that, like savings from removing the diesel tax rebate for coal and gas companies, could be spent on supporting the clean energy transition and assisting communities with adapting to worsening fires, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of climate change.
As politicians arrive in Canberra for budget week, they will be confronted by billboards calling for a fair tax on gas exports. The push now has the support of dozens of organisations and a growing number of politicians. Let’s hope the Treasurer seizes this rare window for reform.
3. Support everyone to be part of the solution
As the price of petrol and diesel rises, electric vehicles (EVs) are helping people cut fuel use and save money. However, while EV sales have jumped since the invasion of Iran sent fuel prices rising, they still only make up a fraction of total new car sales. This budget should help more Australians switch to electric vehicles and, even more importantly, enable more Australians to get around by bike, on foot, and on public transport. This means maintaining the EV discount, investing in public and active transport, and removing tax breaks for fuel-hungry utes and vans.
Millions of Australians already enjoy the cost-saving benefits of rooftop solar, batteries, and getting off gas. This budget should enable more households, and in particular those on lower incomes, to access these benefits. This means maintaining the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, and building on the Household Energy Upgrades Fund.
4. Build the industries of the future
If we’re to transition away from fossil fuels, we need to be building the clean industries of the future.
No state is more pivotal to Australia’s energy and industrial transformation than Western Australia. The state has unrivaled potential for renewable energy development and for replacing fossil fuel exports with clean exports like green iron. Such industries offer Western Australia the promise of a vibrant economic future, and for Australia to play an outsized positive role in the world’s efforts to reduce emissions.
However, realising this potential will require focussed support from the Federal Government. Among other measures, Greenpeace has recommended establishing the Australasian Green Iron Corporation as a joint venture between the Australian and Western Australian governments, a key trading partner, a major iron ore miner and steel makers. This would unite these central players around the complex task of building a large-scale green iron industry, and unleash Western Australia’s potential as a green industrial powerhouse.
5. Build community resilience
Believe it or not, our Government continues to spend far more on subsidising fossil fuel production — and on clearing up after climate-fuelled disasters — than it does on helping communities and industries reduce disaster costs through practical, proven methods for building their resilience.
Last year, the Government estimated that the cost of recovery from disasters like the devastating 2022 east coast floods on 2019-20 fires will rise to $13.5 billion. For contrast, the Government’s Disaster Ready Fund – the main national source of funding for disaster resilience – invests just $200 million a year in grants to support disaster preparedness and resilience building. This is despite the Government’s own National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) estimating that for every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction, there is a $9.60 return on investment.
By redirecting funds currently spent on subsidising fossil fuel production, the Government can both stop incentivising climate destruction in the first place, and ensure that Australian communities and industries are better protected from worsening climate extremes.
No communities have more to lose from climate damage, or carry more knowledge of practical solutions, than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The budget should include a dedicated First Nations climate adaptation fund, ensuring First Nations communities can develop solutions on their own terms, and access the support they need with adapting to extreme heat, coastal erosion and other escalating challenges.
6. Be a better neighbour
The global response to climate change depends on the adequate flow of support from developed economies like Australia to lower income nations with shifting to clean energy, adapting to the impacts of climate change, and addressing loss and damage.
Such support is vital to building trust and cooperation, reducing global emissions, and supporting regional and global security by enabling countries to transition away from fossil fuels and build greater resilience.
Despite its central leadership role in this year’s global climate negotiations, our Government is yet to announce its contribution to international climate finance for 2025-2030. Greenpeace recommends a commitment of $11 billion for this five year period, which is aligned with the global goal under the Paris Agreement to triple international climate finance from current levels.
This new commitment should include additional funding to address loss and damage from climate change and a substantial contribution to the Pacific Resilience Facility, ensuring support is accessible to countries and communities that need it most. It should also see Australia get firmly behind the vision of a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific.
7. Protect nature
There is no safe planet without protection of the ecosystems and biodiversity that sustain us and regulate our climate.
Last year the Parliament passed important and long overdue reforms to our national environment laws to ensure better protection for our forests and other critical ecosystems. However, the Government will need to provide sufficient funding to ensure the effective implementation of these reforms.
Greenpeace has recommended $500 million over four years to establish the National Environment Agency — the body responsible for enforcing and monitoring the new laws — and a further $50 million to Environment Information Australia for providing critical information and tools.
Further resourcing will also be required to fulfil the crucial goal of fully protecting 30% of Australian land and seas by 2030. This should include $1 billion towards ending deforestation by enabling farmers and loggers to retool away from destructive practices, $2 billion a year for restoring degraded lands, $5 billion for purchasing and creating new protected areas, and $200 million for expanding domestic and international marine protected areas.
Conclusion
This is not the first time that conflict overseas has triggered an energy crisis, or that a budget has been preceded by a summer of extreme weather disasters, highlighting the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels. What’s different in 2026 is the availability of solutions. Renewable energy is now cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Global momentum is firmly behind the transition away from fossil fuels. The Albanese Government, with its overwhelming majority, has the chance to set our nation up for the future, or keep us stranded in the past. Let’s hope it makes some smart choices.
The 2026 budget test: Will Australia break free from fossil fuels?
Anne Jellema is Executive Director of 350.org.
The war on Iran and Lebanon is a deeply unjust and devastating conflict, killing civilians at home, destroying lives, and at the same time sending shockwaves through the global economy. We, at 350.org, have calculated, drawing on price forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Goldman Sachs, just how much that volatility is costing us.
Even under the IMF’s baseline scenario – a de facto “best case” scenario with a near-term end to the war and related supply chain disruptions – oil and gas price spikes are projected to cost households and businesses globally more than $600 billion by the end of the year. Under the IMF’s “adverse scenario”, with prolonged conflict and sustained price pressures, we estimate those additional costs could exceed $1 trillion, even after accounting for reduced demand.
Which is why we urgently need a power shift. Governments are under growing pressure to respond to rising fuel and food costs and deepening energy poverty. And it’s becoming clearer to both voters and elected officials that fossil dependence is not only expensive and risky, but unnecessary.
People who can are voting with their wallets: sales of solar panels and electric vehicles are increasing sharply in many countries. But the working people who have nothing to spare, ironically, are the ones stuck with using oil and gas that is either exorbitantly expensive or simply impossible to get.
Drain on households and economies
In India, street food vendors can’t get cooking gas and in the Philippines, fishermen can’t afford to take their boats to sea. A quarter of British people say that rising energy tariffs will leave them completely unable to pay their bills. This is the moment for a global push to bring abundant and affordable clean energy to all.
In April, we released Out of Pocket, our new research report on how fossil fuels are draining households and economies. We were surprised by the scale of what we found. For decades, governments have reassured people that energy price spikes are unfortunate but unavoidable – the result of distant conflicts, market forces or geopolitical shocks beyond anyone’s control. But the numbers tell a different story.
-
Santa Marta: Ministers grapple with practicalities of fossil fuel phase-out
Around 60 governments that want to make progress on transitioning away from coal, oil and gas are meeting in Colombia to work out how they can do it an equitable way -
Why the transition beyond fossil fuels depends on cities and collective action
Cities will help identify concrete pathways for an equitable shift to clean energy at the Santa Marta conference, with C40 members aiming to halve their fossil fuel use by 2030
What we are living through today is not an energy crisis. It is a fossil fuel crisis. In just the first 50 days of the Middle East conflict, soaring oil and gas prices have siphoned an estimated $158 billion–$166 billion from households and businesses worldwide. That is money extracted directly from people’s pockets and transferred, almost instantly, into fossil fuel company balance sheets. And this figure only captures the immediate impact of price spikes, not the permanent economic drain of fossil dependence. Fossil fuels don’t just cost us once, they cost us over and over again.
First, through our bills. Every time there is a war, an embargo or a supply disruption, fossil fuel prices surge. For ordinary people, this means higher costs for energy, transport and food. Many Global South countries have little or no fiscal space to buffer the shock; instead, workers and families pay the price.
Second, through our taxes. Governments around the world continue to pour vast sums of public money into fossil fuel subsidies. These are often justified as a way to protect the most vulnerable at the petrol pump or in their homes. But in reality, the benefits are overwhelmingly captured by wealthier households and corporations. The poorest 20% receive just a fraction of this support, while public finances are drained.
Third, through climate impacts. New research across more than 24,000 global locations gives a granular account of the true costs of extreme heat, sea level rise and falling agricultural yields. Using this data to update IMF modelling of the social cost of carbon, we found that fossil fuel impacts on health and livelihoods amount to over $9 trillion a year. This is the biggest subsidy of all, because these massive and mounting costs are not charged to Big Oil – they are paid for by governments and households, with the poorest shouldering the lion’s share.
Massive transfer of wealth to fossil fuel industry
Adding up direct subsidies, tax breaks and the unpaid bill for climate damages, the total transfer of wealth from the public to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $12 trillion even in a “normal” year without a global oil shock. That’s more than 50% higher than the IMF has previously estimated, and equivalent to a staggering $23 million a minute.
The fossil fuel industry has become extraordinarily adept at profiting from instability. When conflict drives up prices, companies do not lose, they gain. In the current crisis, oil producers and commodity traders are on track to secure tens of billions of dollars in additional windfall profits, even as households face rising bills and governments struggle to manage the fallout.
Fossil fuel crisis offers chance to speed up energy transition, ministers say
This growing disconnect is impossible to ignore. Investors are advised to buy into fossil fuel firms precisely because of their ability to generate profits in times of crisis. Meanwhile, ordinary people are told to tighten their belts.
In 2026, unlike during the oil shocks of the 1970s, clean energy is no longer a distant alternative. Now, even more than when gas prices spiked due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, renewables are often the cheapest option available. Solar and wind can be deployed quickly, at scale, and without the volatility that defines fossil fuel markets.
How to transition from dirty to clean energy
The solutions are clear. Governments must implement permanent windfall taxes on fossil fuel companies to ensure that extraordinary profits generated during crises are redirected to support households. These revenues can be used to reduce energy bills, invest in public services, and accelerate the rollout of clean energy.
Second, we must shift subsidies away from fossil fuels and towards renewable solutions, particularly those that can be deployed quickly and equitably, such as rooftop and community solar. This is not just about cutting emissions. It is about building a more stable, fair and resilient energy system.
Finally, we need binding plans to phase out fossil fuels altogether, replacing them with homegrown renewable energy that can shield economies from future shocks. Because what the current crisis has made clear is this: as long as we remain dependent on fossil fuels, we remain vulnerable – to conflict, to price volatility and to the escalating impacts of climate change.
The true price of fossil fuels is no longer hidden. It is visible in rising bills, strained public finances and communities pushed to the brink. And it is being paid, every day, by ordinary people around the world.
It’s time for the great power shift.
Full details on the methodology used for this report are available here.
The Great Power Shift is a new campaign by 350.org global campaign to pressure governments to bring down energy bills for good by ending fossil fuel dependence and investing in clean, affordable energy for all
The post What fossil fuels really cost us in a world at war appeared first on Climate Home News.
Computer models that use artificial intelligence (AI) cannot forecast record-breaking weather as well as traditional climate models, according to a new study.
It is well established that AI climate models have surpassed traditional, physics-based climate models for some aspects of weather forecasting.
However, new research published in Science Advances finds that AI models still “underperform” in forecasting record-breaking extreme weather events.
The authors tested how well both AI and traditional weather models could simulate thousands of record-breaking hot, cold and windy events that were recorded in 2018 and 2020.
They find that AI models underestimate both the frequency and intensity of record-breaking events.
A study author tells Carbon Brief that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI weather forecasts
Extreme weather events, such as floods, heatwaves and storms, drive hundreds of billions of dollars in damages every year through the destruction of cropland, impacts on infrastructure and the loss of human life.
Many governments have developed early warning systems to prepare the general public and mobilise disaster response teams for imminent extreme weather events. These systems have been shown to minimise damages and save lives.
For decades, scientists have used numerical weather prediction models to simulate the weather days, or weeks, in advance.
These models rely on a series of complex equations that reproduce processes in the atmosphere and ocean. The equations are rooted in fundamental laws of physics, based on decades of research by climate scientists. As a result, these models are referred to as “physics-based” models.
However, AI-based climate models are gaining popularity as an alternative for weather forecasting.
Instead of using physics, these models use a statistical approach. Scientists present AI models with a large batch of historical weather data, known as training data, which teaches the model to recognise patterns and make predictions.
To produce a new forecast, the AI model draws on this bank of knowledge and follows the patterns that it knows.
There are many advantages to AI weather forecasts. For example, they use less computing power than physics-based models, because they do not have to run thousands of mathematical equations.
Furthermore, many AI models have been found to perform better than traditional physics-based models at weather forecasts.
However, these models also have drawbacks.
Study author Prof Sebastian Engelke, a professor at the research institute for statistics and information science at the University of Geneva, tells Carbon Brief that AI models “depend strongly on the training data” and are “relatively constrained to the range of this dataset”.
In other words, AI models struggle to simulate brand new weather patterns, instead tending forecast events of a similar strength to those seen before. As a result, it is unclear whether AI models can simulate unprecedented, record-breaking extreme events that, by definition, have never been seen before.
Record-breaking extremes
Extreme weather events are becoming more intense and frequent as the climate warms. Record-shattering extremes – those that break existing records by large margins – are also becoming more regular.
For example, during a 2021 heatwave in north-western US and Canada, local temperature records were broken by up to 5C. According to one study, the heatwave would have been “impossible” without human-caused climate change.
The new study explores how accurately AI and physics-based models can forecast such record-breaking extremes.
First, the authors identified every heat, cold and wind event in 2018 and 2020 that broke a record previously set between 1979 and 2017. (They chose these years due to data availability.) The authors use ERA5 reanalysis data to identify these records.
This produced a large sample size of record-breaking events. For the year 2020, the authors identified around 160,000 heat, 33,000 cold and 53,000 wind records, spread across different seasons and world regions.
For their traditional, physics-based model, the authors selected the High RESolution forecast model from the Integrated Forecasting System of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This is “widely considered as the leading physics-based numerical weather prediction model”, according to the paper.
They also selected three “leading” AI weather models – the GraphCast model from Google Deepmind, Pangu-Weather developed by Huawei Cloud and the Fuxi model, developed by a team from Shanghai.
The authors then assessed how accurately each model could forecast the extremes observed in the year 2020.
Dr Zhongwei Zhang is the lead author on the study and a researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He tells Carbon Brief that many AI weather forecast models were built for “general weather conditions”, as they use all historical weather data to train the models. Meanwhile, forecasting extremes is considered a “secondary task” by the models.
The authors explored a range of different “lead times” – in other words, how far into the future the model is forecasting. For example, a lead time of two days could mean the model uses the weather conditions at midnight on 1 January to simulate weather conditions at midnight on 3 January.
The plot below shows how accurately the models forecasted all extreme events (left) and heat extremes (right) under different lead times. This is measured using “root mean square error” – a metric of how accurate a model is, where a lower value indicates lower error and higher accuracy.
The chart on the left shows how two of the AI models (blue and green) performed better than the physics-based model (black) when forecasting all weather across the year 2020.
However, the chart on the right illustrates how the physics-based model (black) performed better than all three AI models (blue, red and green) when it came to forecasting heat extremes.
The authors note that the performance gap between AI and physics-based models is widest for lower lead times, indicating that AI models have greater difficulty making predictions in the near future.
They find similar results for cold and wind records.
In addition, the authors find that AI models generally “underpredict” temperature during heat records and “overpredict” during cold records.
The study finds that the larger the margin that the record is broken by, the less well the AI model predicts the intensity of the event.
‘Warning shot’
Study author Prof Erich Fischer is a climate scientist at ETH Zurich and a Carbon Brief contributing editor. He tells Carbon Brief that the result is “not unexpected”.
He adds that the analysis is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
The analysis, he continues, is a “warning shot” against replacing traditional models with AI models for weather forecasting “too quickly”.
AI models are likely to continue to improve, but scientists should “not yet” fully replace traditional forecasting models with AI ones, according to Fischer.
He explains that accurate forecasts are “most needed” in the runup to potential record-breaking extremes, because they are the trigger for early warning systems that help minimise damages caused by extreme weather.
Leonardo Olivetti is a PhD student at Uppsala University, who has published work on AI weather forecasting and was not involved in the study.
He tells Carbon Brief that “many other studies” have identified issues with using AI models for “extremes”, but this paper is novel for its specific focus on extremes.
Olivetti notes that AI models are already used alongside physics-based models at “some of the major weather forecasting centres around the world”. However, the study results suggest “caution against relying too heavily on these [AI] models”, he says.
Prof Martin Schultz, a professor in computational earth system science at the University of Cologne who was not involved in the study, tells Carbon Brief that the results of the analysis are “very interesting, but not too surprising”.
He adds that the study “justifies the continued use of classical numerical weather models in operational forecasts, in spite of their tremendous computational costs”.
Advances in forecasting
The field of AI weather forecasting is evolving rapidly.
Olivetti notes that the three AI models tested in the study are an “older generation” of AI models. In the last two years, newer “probabilistic” forecast models have emerged that “claim to better capture extremes”, he explains.
The three AI models used in the analysis are “deterministic”, meaning that they only simulate one possible future outcome.
In contrast, study author Engelke tells Carbon Brief that probabilistic models “create several possible future states of the weather” and are therefore more likely to capture record-breaking extremes.
Engelke says it is “important” to evaluate the newer generation of models for their ability to forecast weather extremes.
He adds that this paper has set out a “protocol” for testing the ability of AI models to predict unprecedented extreme events, which he hopes other researchers will go on to use.
The study says that another “promising direction” for future research is to develop models that combine aspects of traditional, physics-based weather forecasts with AI models.
Engelke says this approach would be “best of both worlds”, as it would combine the ability of physics-based models to simulate record-breaking weather with the computational efficiency of AI models.
Dr Kyle Hilburn, a research scientist at Colorado State University, notes that the study does not address extreme rainfall, which he says “presents challenges for both modelling and observing”. This, he says, is an “important” area for future research.
The post Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Traditional models still ‘outperform AI’ for extreme weather forecasts
-
Climate Change9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases9 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Renewable Energy6 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits