Recent heat waves are contributing to a global rise in food prices, a key commodity metric shows, while added impacts from a developing “super El Niño” are intensified by climate change.

Prices for major commodity foods overall rose from June to July, says the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) latest Food Price Index, a monthly report that tracks changes in global prices for key commodities. The index showed average food prices rose during that time and remain above 2025 levels due to increases for cereal crops, oils, and sugars, though prices for meat and dairy went down.

The FAO states that global harvests are still threatened by heat waves and El Niño, while war and geopolitical tensions continue to drive market uncertainty.

Climate change’s persisting influence on food production was also made apparent in another recent report from Oxford Economics, which found that this summer’s extreme weather conditions in the European Union and United Kingdom are likely to be the major driver of that region’s predicted food price inflation in 2027. Extreme weather—such as heat waves over parts of Europe—will overshadow the temporary influence of the Iran War on food prices, which had a less severe impact on food prices than anticipated. Those effects are already easing.

At the same time, what could be one of the most powerful El Niño seasons since 1950 “has the potential to ripple through to the broader food and agricultural sector, and ultimately the global economy,” Warren Patterson and Thijs Geijer, analysts at ING, told the Financial Times.

The World Meteorological Organization said in a July 31 release that an already strong 2026 El Niño is intensifying and expected to dominate weather patterns from August to October. While El Niño typically has a harmful impact on agriculture, accepted science indicates the weather pattern is being intensified by climate change because warmer global temperatures increase evaporation and heat stress.

FAO Chief Economist Máximo Torero told the Financial Times that government reactions to the resulting losses could worsen some regional food shortages if countries impose export restrictions.

Emerging markets, where agriculture tends to play an outsized role in national economies, are especially vulnerable, reports Reuters. Countries in parts of Asia and South America are most affected by a weather pattern that shifts heavy rainfall and drought in the region. Agricultural production in India, which relies on the annual monsoon for 70% of its rainfall, is especially exposed, with the country’s meteorological department warning that rainfall there could be the lowest in the last decade.

Countries in the Global North will be affected, too. The Oxford Economics study tpredicts that El Niño will account for about 1% of the UK and EU’s 3% food inflation forecasted for next year.

Deutsche Bank, in a report released last month, warned that the effects of this year’s El Niño could reach across sectors through widespread disruption of supply chains.

“For markets, an El Niño is capable of hitting agricultural production, hydropower, shipping, and even has effects on public health and political stability,” wrote Henry Allen, a strategist for the bank.

“In other words, it operates as a multi-channel supply shock.”