[Ed. Note: Yeah, that sounds perfectly credible. It’s that 0.03 extra degrees causing it. Uh huh. Go on.]
by Zack Budryk
The Hill
Rising global temperatures are associated with inflation in food prices, both in regions that are already hotter and in countries outside the tropics like the U.S., according to a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.
Researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the European Central Bank studied monthly price indexes between 1996 and 2021 in 121 countries. The study found food prices are the monthly inflation signal most strongly associated with the climate, which researchers attributed to the supply shocks associated with temperature increases. Both new milestones for extreme heat and shifts in average temperatures are associated with longer-term inflation. In European countries, where the summer of 2022 broke temperature records, that heat was accompanied by food inflation increases of 0.43 percentage points to 0.93 percentage points.