Europe's heat and drought crop losses tripled in 50 years: study

The study said the punishing heat wave and drought of 2018 in Europe caused a decrease in grain production of 8%

(Subscribe to Science For All, our weekly newsletter, where we aim to take the jargon out of science and put the fun in. .) The severity of crop losses driven by heat waves and drought have tripled in the last fifty years in Europe, that highlights the vulnerability of food systems to climate change. Research published recently in the journal Environmental Research Letters, looked at agricultural production in 28 European countries — the current European Union and United Kingdom — from 1961 to 2018.