Climate change is to blame for severe drought in the Fertile Crescent, research shows
Man-made climate change is causing years of extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, an area that includes a region known as the Fertile Crescent and a cradle of civilization, scientists said Wednesday.
The scientists highlighted that years of conflict and political instability, combined with the challenges of rapid urbanization in the region, have limited the ability of local communities to respond to the drought, turning it into a humanitarian crisis.
The past three years have seen the second worst drought on record shriveled wheat crops and led to tensions between neighboring countries and communities over access to dwindling water supplies. It has also displaced tens of thousands of people and left millions hungry.
The crisis is evidence of how global warming, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, can act as “a threat multiplier,” said Rana El Hajj, technical advisor at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center in Lebanon, and one of the ten authors of the report. the study. It was released by the World Weather Attribution initiative, an international scientific collaboration specializing in rapid analysis of extreme weather conditions.
The drought, she added, “is just an indication of a reality that could affect vulnerable groups around the world, as man-made challenges, including environmental degradation and conflict, could increase the growing risk of climate change and could have unprecedented consequences.”
The researchers studied the effects of climate change on the low rainfall and high temperatures experienced by the Fertile Crescent, the region around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and Iran between July 2020 and June 2023. Although the study was not peer-reviewed, findings are based on standardized methods that have been.
The researchers found that warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels had no significant impact on rainfall, but that high temperatures that continue to heat the region are 16 times more likely in Iran and 25 times more likely in Iraq and Syria.
Such heat would have been “virtually impossible without climate change,” said Ben Clarke, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London.
High temperatures cause dry conditions because they increase evapotranspiration, or the amount of water that evaporates from soil, water bodies and plants. Combined with a lack of rainfall, this is what experts call an ‘agricultural drought’.
In a hypothetical world where humans had not released massive amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, weather conditions in the region analyzed by the study would be so much less severe that they would not be considered a drought at all. researchers said.
“One thing is very clear, though: this is already hitting the limits of what some people can adapt to,” said Friederike Otto, one of the study’s authors and a senior lecturer in climate science at Grantham University. Research Institute. “As long as we continue to burn fossil fuels or even issue new permits to explore new oil and gas fields, these types of events will only get worse.”
The Middle East is among the regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The country is suffering from almost constant drought since 1998, although rainfall in 2020 provided some respite. Yet a large part of the population depends on rain to feed wheat crops and provide drinking water for livestock.
The impacts of climate change have been exacerbated not only by political instability, but also by weak governance over water resources and dependence on wasteful irrigation techniques across the region. A growing population with increasing water needs and rapid urbanization are putting more pressure on the region’s inadequate water infrastructure.
According to figures from Iraq, 61 percent of households suffered from water shortages a study published last year that was led by the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group. A fifth of respondents said they had completely run out of water.
Iran, the largest wheat producer in the region, was forced to do so increase imports after the drought last year led to major crop failures. Food prices skyrocketed in the country, while the war in Ukraine had already fueled food inflation around the world.
In Syria, an 11-year war and economic collapse, combined with drought, have left 12 million people hungry, according to the International Rescue Committee. a humanitarian non-profit organization. The displacement of communities around the remaining water sources also led to coutbreaks of holera.
It is unlikely that the climate will bring any respite. Extreme drought is no longer a rare event in a world that is 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than in pre-industrial times. This is now expected to happen at least every decade in the Euphrates River basin and at least twice a decade in Iran.
Current dry conditions are expected to continue, said Mohammad Rahimi, a professor of climatology at Iran’s Semnan University and another author of the study. Projections of the future, he added, indicate that “Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even tougher places to live.”