To bring home what this is likely to mean, let’s take a closer look at the summer of 2003 – an outlier historically, but a likely harbinger of things to come. Plotted here is the number of summers in which the temperature deviated from the typical average for France over the past hundred years or so. The average temperature the summer of 2003 was 3.6o higher than the average summer in 2003, although rainfall was normal.  We all heard about how bad this was for people: somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 people died from heat-related causes that summer.  What we didn’t hear much about was the effect on crops.  Italy saw a 36% decrease in maize yield, while France experienced a 30% reduction in maize and fodder yields, a 25% decrease in fruit harvests and a 21% reduction in wheat yields.