Too Hot To Handle: This Threat To Your Morning Coffee Helps Drive Up Prices Jennifer Gray Thu, February 26, 2026 at 11:30 AM UTC 0 For millions of people around the world, including myself, coffee isn't just a drink — it's a ritual. It's a personality trait, a nonnegotiable. Coffee has fueled work deadlines, long road trips and early school dropoffs. But behind that daily ritual is a delicate growing environment, one that's as fragile as our mood before that first cup. And it's already starting to shift. And these shifts are hitting our wallets, too.
Too Hot To Handle: This Threat To Your Morning Coffee Helps Drive Up Prices
Jennifer Gray Thu, February 26, 2026 at 11:30 AM UTC
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For millions of people around the world, including myself, coffee isn't just a drink — it's a ritual. It's a personality trait, a non-negotiable. Coffee has fueled work deadlines, long road trips and early school drop-offs.
But behind that daily ritual is a delicate growing environment, one that's as fragile as our mood before that first cup. And it's already starting to shift.
And these shifts are hitting our wallets, too. Climate change, along with tariffs placed on coffee being imported into the U.S., has really spiked coffee prices in recent years. The price of a pound of coffee rose dramatically over the past year. This January, a pound of coffee cost $9.37, up from just a little more than $7 the year before.
Just as we have our own preferences for the perfect cup, coffee plants require a narrow range of temperatures and rainfall to grow successfully.
According to a study by Climate Central, those temperatures are being pushed to the brink.
How Hot Is Too Hot For Coffee?
The vast majority of the world's coffee is made from Arabica coffee plants and Robusta coffee plants. However, if the temperature rises above 86 degrees, it can be harmful for these plants to grow.
What Climate Central has discovered is that in the five top coffee-producing countries, days above 86 degrees are becoming increasingly common due to climate change.
In Brazil alone, the world's top coffee-growing country, they have seen 70 extra days of coffee-harming heat on average during the last five years. And that number is expected to rise.
The "bean belt" comprises 25 countries, and all of them are facing this harmful heat to coffee plants. On average, these countries are facing 47 days a year that are considered harmful to coffee plants, with El Salvador experiencing more than double that number.
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Future projections show that land suitable for coffee production may decrease by 50% by the year 2050 without adequate adaptation.
While temperature may have the biggest direct impact on coffee production, rainfall also plays a critical role in a successful coffee plant.
With temperature extremes come rainfall pattern changes, which are doubling down on harming these coffee plants.
A successful plant loves anywhere between 59 and 79 inches of rainfall per year, and climate change is making that harder to achieve. With areas becoming more prone to droughts and floods, it's putting added stress on coffee production.
But what if something could be done?
Colombia's Response To Climate Change
Research shows that Colombia is leading the charge when it comes to coffee production and mitigating climate change.
As the world's third-largest coffee producer, they have started not only investing in types of coffee plants that can tolerate higher temperatures, but they have also started planting native trees over their coffee plantations to provide shade, which lowers the temperatures the coffee plants are exposed to.
Ninety-five percent of the world's 12.5 million coffee farms are considered "smallholders," which means they farm less than about 12 acres of land. These small farms are particularly vulnerable to climate change, as the family's livelihood depends on a successful crop.
However, if resources are available from large farms to the smallest, then there's a better chance that our morning cup of coffee, the one we swear we can't function without, will still be there when we need it.
Tom O'Neill/Getty Images
Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.
Source: "AOL Breaking"
Source: Breaking
Published: 2026-02-26T11:55:02Z on Source: PRIME TIME
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