Scallop fisherman Yachio Nakagawa let out a deep sigh as he loaded his measly catch of fry into baskets early one morning in late November.

“Around 30 percent of them are dead,” exclaimed the 67-year-old, who was on his fishing boat close to Yomogita port in Mutsu Bay, Aomori Prefecture. “I have never encountered anything like this before.”

Many of the juvenile shellfish had opened, their growth stunted midway.

Finding so many scallops dead or dying so abruptly was the lowest point in Nakagawa’s 37-year career as a fisherman.

RISING WATER TEMPERATURES

The culprit? Rising water temperatures brought on by global warming. Juvenile scallops cannot survive temperatures in excess of 26 degrees.

This year in particular, water temperatures started climbing earlier than usual due to the extreme summer heat that “cooked” local waters. Even in late July, a reading of upward of 23 degrees was logged at a depth of 15 meters in Mutsu Bay.

Water temperatures remained at that level for more than two months. The maximum water temperature in early September was more than 4 degrees above standard in some locations.

Subsequently, 90 percent of young scallops were killed off in one spot, according to Tatsunori Kozuka, 42, who heads the sales division of the Hiranai fisheries cooperative association. The association's catch accounts for about half of the prefecture’s total haul.

“Exposing scallops to those temperatures is like bathing people in boiling water,” Kozuka said. “On occasion, I have heard fishermen lament that they will have nothing to sell next year.”

IMPACT ON CROPS

The extreme summer heat also made its presence felt on a winter delicacy in Kyoto Prefecture.

A farmer, in Kameoka, an area in the prefecture renowned for producing quality Shogoin turnips for use in “senmaizuke” pickles, pointed to underdeveloped crops in a 400-square-meter corner of his agricultural field that he had no choice but to discard.

“I have given up reaping the harvest in that section,” the 54-year-old farmer said.

The initial round of sowing was proactively postponed in anticipation of the mercury going off the charts this summer. However, the high temperatures did not come down even with the arrival of autumn. Owing to the sweltering heat, sprouts did not fare well, either.

Disease and pest damage compounded the problem, and the turnips sowed in the first round failed to grow to a decent size. They also displayed color changes, causing the vegetable’s characteristic “smooth skin” to be tarnished.

“Turnips were in short supply during times of high demand,” recalled a representative of time-honored senmaizuke vendor Daiyasu Co. in Kyoto city.

The situation forced Daiyasu to push back sales of senmaizuke to late October. That type of pickle normally becomes available in September.

In Niigata Prefecture and elsewhere, masses of clouded unripe rice grains were all-too-apparent this summer as well.

Tomoyoshi Hirota, a professor of agrometeorology at Kyushu University, noted that the output of some crops has been dwindling despite growing yields of agricultural products per unit area due to selective breeding and other advanced farming technologies.

“The fact is that the speed of research is not fast enough to keep pace with temperature rises,” Hirota asserted.

The average temperature in Japan hit a record this summer.

“The reading was incredibly high, far exceeding earlier forecasts,” said an official of the Japan Meteorological Agency.

BOILING EARTH

Research by the University of Tokyo and other institutions found that the extreme heat would have been nearly impossible without global warming, no matter what combination of adverse elements was thrown into the mix.

Another effect of global warming is that line-shaped rainbands are 1.5 times more likely to form and bring torrential rain nationwide.

Climate-related disasters were evident across the world. For example, a vast area equivalent to half of Japan’s size was reduced to ashes by wildfires in Canada. A spate of floods struck South Korea, India and Libya. More than 140 people perished in blazing heat in the United States.

Another factor is the possibility that EL Nino may escalate the current trend of extreme heat.

Drought and disastrous rainfalls successively hit other parts of the world as well.

Data compiled by the International Organization of Vine and Wine projects that the global output of vino will be lowest in 60 years due to poor grape harvests.

Higher-than-usual temperatures were recorded in November on a continual basis.

Brazilian media reported that a female concertgoer died of a heatstroke during a performance by global sensation Taylor Swift in Rio de Janeiro on Nov. 17. The mercury hit a maximum of 39.1 degrees that day.

Statistics from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service show that the world’s average temperature was up 2 degrees or more from pre-industrial revolution levels for the first time that day.

According to a U.N. simulation, the global temperature increase will reach nearly 3 degrees by the end of this century even if countries around the world succeed in fulfilling their current carbon footprint reduction goals.

A study suggests that catastrophic heat waves will occur four times every five years with the temperature rise of 3 degrees compared with only once within five years at present.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is warning that the “choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”

(This article was written by Yusuke Noda, Junko Saimoto and Takahiro Takenouchi.)