One of America's favorite alcoholic beverages could be threatened by climate change, including recent weather trends in Washington state, KING 5 says.
Yakima Valley is the world's largest producer of hops, which are flowers used to flavor beer. These plants also require irrigation to grow, but warmer winters and fewer snowmelts mean less water for crops.
This year's intense heat waves are just a taste of the Pacific Northwest's changing climate. Some farmers have reported damaged crops and yields from the severe temperatures, and that's not including the threat of wildfires.
Add on an extreme ongoing drought, and an early-season melt of snowpacks and glaciers, and hops producers may see challenges ahead.
"Over the next few decades, scientists say other impacts from climate change will include warmer winters, which could decrease the snowpack that provides water in the summer to farmers, including hops producers. University of Washington researchers estimate snowpack could drop by 29% in our current decade, 44% in the 2040s and 65% in the 2080s," reporters learned.
The good news is that hops producers are already working on ways to circumvent these issues. For example, they're developing processing methods that use significantly less water, KING 5 wrote.