Two-and-a-half years of meager rainfall has withered crops, killed livestock and left the Horn of Africa, one of the world’s poorest, severely affected. famine on the brink. Millions of people have faced lack of food and water. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes to seek relief. ONE forecast below normal for the current rainy season means the suffering could continue.
An international team of scientists says human-caused climate change has made droughts so severe in this part of Africa at least 100 times more severe than in pre-industrial times. a study published on Thursday. These findings clearly illustrate the misery that burning fossil fuels, mainly in rich countries, causes societies that emit almost nothing by comparison.
In the countries hardest hit by the drought – Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia – climate hazards have piled on political and economic vulnerabilities. The region’s string of weak wet seasons is now the longest in about 70 years on record for reliable rainfall. But what makes this drought special, according to the study, is not only the low rainfall, but also the high temperatures that have dried the land.
Joyce Kimutai, the Institute’s principal meteorologist, said the study estimates that hot and dry periods like the recent one now have about a 5% chance of developing each year in the region – a figure that is readily available. willing to increase as the planet continues to warm. Kenya Meteorological Department and lead author of the study. “We could see the combined effect of low rainfall with drought-induced temperatures really particularly in this part of the world.”
Climate groups have for years pointed to the disaster in East Africa as evidence of the enormous harm done to poor regions by global warming due to emissions of heat-trapping gases. The new analysis could provide more basis for those calling for polluting nations to pay for the economic damage caused by their emissions.
“This important study shows that climate change is not just something our children need to worry about — it is already here,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based consultancy. Kenya, said. “Those on the front lines of the climate crisis need and deserve financial support to recover and rebuild their lives.”
at the United Nations climate negotiations Last year in Egypt, diplomats from nearly 200 countries agreed to set up a fund to help vulnerable countries deal with climate catastrophe.
“We now have to make sure that the fund is created fit for purpose,” said Harjeet Singh, head of political strategy at the International Climate Action Network. “This means that rich countries and big polluters have to pay their share to bring the funds to life and to ensure that the respective money reaches the affected people on the ground first. when it’s too late.”
In Somalia in particular, the drought has exacerbated the unrest caused by a multi-year drought. armed conflict. There, the drought may have caused 43,000 deaths last year, according to estimates released last month. Nearly half of these are children under the age of 5.
The new analysis was carried out by Dr Kimutai and 18 other researchers as part of the World Weather Allocation, a scientific collaboration that attempts to untangle the effects of human-caused climate change for heat waves, floods and other periods of extreme weather. The study has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, although it is based on methods widely used and accepted by the researchers.
Scientists know that global warming is increasing the average likelihood and severity of certain types of wild weather in many regions. But to understand how it affected a particular one-off event, they needed to dig deeper. It’s like smoking and cancer: The two are undeniably linked, but not all smokers get cancer and not all cancer patients are smokers. Everyone is slightly different, and so is every weather event.
To determine the impact of global warming on individual weather periods, climate researchers use computer simulations to compare the global climate with reality — with billions of tons of carbon dioxide. pumped into the atmosphere by humans for decades — and the climate assumes none of those emissions.
The authors of the new study examined drought in East Africa by looking at data on average rainfall over 24 months and over both of the region’s rainy seasons, one between March and May and the other mid-May. October and December. Their mathematical models show that climate change has made spring rains twice as weak as recent rains. The models also show that climate change has the opposite effect on the autumn rainy seasons, making them wetter. And they show that there is no effect on combined precipitation over a two-year period.
However, a different picture emerged when the researchers looked at both precipitation and transpiration, or the amount of water leaving the soil due to warm temperatures. Their models show that global warming has made the combination of high evapotranspiration and poor rainfall as severe as the recent one at least 100 times more than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
Scientists are getting a better understanding of the atmospheric conditions that make rain absent in the Horn of Africa and how global warming might affect them.
In recent decades, as the Pacific has experienced La Nina conditions, trade winds strengthen and push warm water from the eastern end of the ocean toward its west. Heat accumulating in the western equatorial Pacific around Indonesia causes moist air to rise out of the sea and form thunderstorms. This in turn affects the air circulation over the Indian Ocean, which draws more moisture from the western end of that ocean towards the eastern end, and causes less rain to fall over the Horn of Europe. Fly.
Climate change is steadily warming the western Pacific surface, which amplifies this sequence of events and increases the incidence of poor rainfall in East Africa during the La Nina period.
Chris Funk, climate scientist and director of the Center for Climate Hazards at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says an improved scientific understanding has helped forecasters predict recent weak rainfall in the region. East Africa for months.
“Those were light years ahead of where we were in 2010 or 2016,” he said, referring to years before past droughts in the region.
Phoebe Wafubwa Shikuku, Nairobi-based adviser to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said policymakers in East Africa need to help communities be better equipped to recover from droughts. future droughts – for example by encouraging the use of drought-tolerant crops and livestock. society. “Droughts will continue to happen,” she said. “Now we have to consider, How do we deal with the different impacts?”
