Recent findings, quantified with a supercomputer climate model and released at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, have shown that one third of the planet will be desert by the year 2100. Climate experts say this is the most dire warning yet of the effects of global warming. The study, from the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, drew horrified reactions from aid agencies and development specialists, who fear developing countries will be worst hit.

Food emergencies in Africa each year have almost tripled since the 1980s. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people is under-nourished. One of Britain’s leading climate change experts, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said, “There’s almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these predictions don’t undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions of people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this is going to push them over the precipice.”

The model shows how climate change will affect the three levels of drought by 2100. Currently at 25 percent of the Earth’s surface, moderate drought will rise to 50 percent. Severe drought, currently at 8 percent, will rise to 40 percent. Currently at 3 percent, extreme drought will rise to 30 percent. The future affects of climate change are likely to be even greater than the study suggests because carbon cycle effects, which make drought worse, were not included in the data. Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide said, “We’re talking about 30 per cent of the world’s land surface becoming essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a few decades. These are parts of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no longer be able to feed themselves.”

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