To understand the most pressing problems — which appear to be exacerbated by rising temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns and other effects of climate change — the nonprofit World Coffee Research (WCR) commissioned the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, by its French acronym) to classify global growing areas by climate condition, dividing regions into what is known in climate modeling as pixels. (Think of them as microlots, but for climates.) The pixels were grouped by common climate profiles, resulting in five agro-ecological zones: hot-wet, hot-dry, constant, cool-variable and cool-dry.

These zones are intended to help researchers focus on the different areas in which coffee currently grows, providing a more accurate forecast of where it might not grow in the future. Predicting how each zone would behave in response to 19 distinct climate-model projections shows that land suitable for coffee growing could drop by a staggering 50 percent over the next three decades.

via Daily Coffee News, full article here.