Climate Change Comes for Your Cup of Tea

Next to water, tea is the most popular and widely-consumed beverage in the world.  Globally, six million acres are devoted to tea production.  But the future of this multi-billion dollar crop is jeopardized by a host of climate-related changes that are making it harder to grow tea and altering the quality of the final product in teapots around the world.

India produces one-third of the world's tea and about half of that comes from the tea estates of the Assam region in the northeast.

Yet Assam, typically categorized as sub-tropical, is increasingly resembling a fully tropical climate.  According to data collected by the Tea Research Association, temperatures in Assam and Darjeeling have gone up by 2 degrees Celsius and rainfall has become erratic.  While the total amount of rain in the region has not changed dramatically, the intensity of droughts and severe downpours has increased.  The prolonged droughts are killing tea bushes and the intense rain events are causing erosion in tea plantations, terraced into hillsides.

Climate Change Comes for Your Cup of Tea