Crepe! Will climate change ruin pancake day?
Climate change is warming the planet. It’s melting glaciers and increasing rainfall. And now… it’s coming for your pancakes.
Well, tenuously, perhaps. It’s all to do with maple syrup – that old pancake classic. Rising temperatures are making life difficult for maple trees, and that’s no joke for maple farmers (or pancake lovers).
As you might expect, maple syrup comes from collecting the sap from maple trees – a process called tapping. Maple trees grow mainly in parts of New England in the United States and Canada, where it apparently provides more than 12,000 jobs.
Producing good syrup needs the right balance between below freezing temperatures at night and temperatures a few degrees above freezing during the day.
Maple trees are getting stressed …
Syrup production is inversely related to temperature – as temperature rises, maple trees produce less syrup. One study suggests that if greenhouse gas emissions follow the IPCC’s most fossil fuel-heavy emissions scenario (A1F1), warmer winter temperatures could mean 16 fewer sap collecting days per season – bad news for syrup producers.
On top of a shorter tapping season, steadily warming temperatures could mean the best time to start collecting syrup – early in Spring – happens a full month earlier by the end of the century. This is before many producers start tapping their trees, which may mean they miss out on valuable syrup.
According to another study, maple syrup production south of Pennsylvania will probably be lost completely by 2100, because night time temperatures are unlikely to drop below freezing.
The quality of the syrup might suffer too, as maple trees need prolonged cold weather in February and March to recharge their sap. Perfect syrup from the maple tree should contain between two and five per cent sugar, according to a US national assessment of the maple industry.
That all sounds pretty bad, from a pancake-focused point of view.
â?¦ and migrating northwards
But there may be a more positive take on the issue – although it’s unlikely to reassure US maple syrup producers.
Warmer temperatures in winter are driving the bulk of the maple syrup industry out of New England, into Canada. In Canada, heavy snow used to limit maple syrup collection but now, growing seasons are longer – making it better suited than New England.
Models predict winter temperatures will increase more than summer temperatures, which means the northward migration into Canada will probably continue. Hopefully Canada will be able to step in as the US warms up. We even found a handy lesson plan to teach Canadian school children how climate change could affect their pancakes.
So there we go. Amazingly, there’s actually some serious scientific debate relevant to how climate change will impact pancake consumption.
Luckily for traditionalists in the UK, there’s no clear scientific evidence that lemons and sugar are as climate sensitive as maple syrup. But if you have friends over for pancakes tonight, why not bore them with your detailed knowledge of the likely impacts of climate change on pancakes over the next century or so?