Tag Archives: climate

Antarctic warmth brings more snow, reducing sea level rise Updated for 2026

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Evidence is mounting that the more the Antarctic warms under the impact of climate change, the more snow will fall on it, causing a build-up of ice.

The research, published in Nature Climate Change, builds on high-quality ice-core data and fundamental laws of physics captured in global and regional climate model simulations.

The team of authors, led by scientists from Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), says each degree Celsius of warming in the region could increase Antarctic snowfall by about 5%.

The suggestion that Antarctic snowfall is increasing is not itself new. But what the Potsdam scientists have done is important: they both provide new evidence to support the contention, and explore its potential consequences.

Katja Frieler, climate impacts and vulnerabilities researcher at PIK, and lead author of the report, says: “Warmer air transports more moisture, and hence produces more precipitation. In cold Antarctica, this takes the form of snowfall.

“We have now pulled a number of various lines of evidence together and find a very consistent result: temperature increase means more snowfall on Antarctica.”

The answers are in the ice-cores

To reach a robust estimate, the PIK scientists collaborated with colleagues in the Netherlands and the US including co-author Peter U. Clark, professor of geology and geophysics at Oregon State University.

“Ice-cores drilled in different parts of Antarctica provide data that can help us understand the future”, he says. “Information about the snowfall spanning the large temperature change during the last deglaciation, 21,000 to 10,000 years ago, tells us what we can expect during the next century.”

The researchers combined the ice-core data with simulations of the Earth’s climate history and comprehensive future projections by different climate models, and were able to pin down temperature and accumulation changes in warming Antarctica.

The ‘good news’ is that the increasing snowfall on the continent will add to the mass of the ice sheet and increase its height, offsetting sea level rise from other causes.

But on balance, Antarctica will still lose ice to the ocean

But the ‘bad news’, say the researchers, is that most of the snow won’t stay there. “Snow piling up on the ice is heavy and presses down – the higher the ice, the more pressure”, co-author Ricarda Winkelmann explains.

On the basis of another previous PIK study, the extra snow will increase the amount of ice flowing to the ocean. “Because additional snowfall elevates the grounded ice-sheet on the Antarctic continent but less so the floating ice shelves at its shore, the ice flows more rapidly into the ocean and contributes to sea level”, says Dr Winkelmann.

So on balance, the sea level-lowering effect from the extra snow is a relatively small one: the 5% increase in Antarctic snowfall that they expect for every 1°C rise in temperature would mean an estimated drop in sea-level of only about three centimetres after a century. By contrast melting ice in Greenland threatens metres of sea level rise.

Adding to Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise, rising sea levels in the Southern Ocean – mainly caused by the thermal expansion of oceans and melting glaciers around the world, most importantly on Greenland – will allow coastal ice shelves to flow more rapidly into the ocean.

Furthermore even slight warming of the waters lapping Antarctica will make it easier for coastal ice to break off, allowing more of the continental ice mass to discharge into the ocean.

So the frozen continent will still be a net source of sea level rise in a warming world, says co-author Anders Levermann – PIK professor of dynamics of the climate system, and lead author of the sea-level rise chapter in the latest report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“If we look at the big picture, these new findings don’t change the fact that Antarctica will lose more ice than it will gain, and that it will contribute to future sea-level change”, he says.

Dr Frieler agrees: “Under global warming, the Antarctic ice sheet, with its huge volume, could become a major contributor to future sea-level rise, potentially affecting millions of people living in coastal areas.”

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 




391405

Let them eat carbon! The corporate plan to cook Africa in its own fossil fuels Updated for 2026

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If you have ever wondered about what is blocking action against climate change, consider this.

There’s an estimated £19 trillion GBP ($28 trillion) worth of fossil fuel reserves in the world. Only 20% of these can be extracted and burned if the world is to stay below a 2°C temperature rise from pre-industrial levels and avoid catastrophic climate change.

The sensible solution to tackling global warming is thus clear and simple: keep these fossil fuels underground. This means that £15 trillion ($22 trillion) worth of carbon must remain untouched. To burn it would be tantamount to committing global suicide!

So, why is no real action being taken to tackle global warming? Because it’s all about capital: profit, not people and planet. It’s about the insatiable appetite for financial accumulation by fossil fuel companies, their shareholders and their agents.

To avoid a catastrophic temperature rise, industrial economies must urgently decarbonise the way they travel, power and move things. Even a 2°C rise in global temperature would have huge impacts. In Africa, this ‘safe’ 2° will in effect translate to a 3°C increase. The current ‘business as usual’ fossil fuel path we are on is set to burn up and fossilise the African continent.

And yet, though the stakes could not be higher, rather than halting the exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, corporations are digging deeper and using ever more extreme means of extraction. In this effort they are aided by their unprecedented political connections.

Papering over Africa’s scars

Chatham House’s Extractive Industries in Africa conference, which concludes today, has brought together miners and politicians to discuss strategies for exploiting Africa’s mineral resources. It is a clear indicator that the quest for profit does not consider the great harm inflicted on the continent and our shared climate.

Indeed, the damage done by the extractives sector goes beyond climate impacts and includes a wholesale disregard for human rights, the displacement of communities and unthinkable levels of pollution of land, water and the air.

The scars of mining in Africa are visible in the coal mines of South Africa, the gold mines of Ghana and Mali, as well as in the devastation caused by oil companies in the once verdant ecosystems of the Niger Delta. It is also well known that mining causes many of the persistent violent conflicts in Africa.

Sadly, however, ecological destruction for the purpose of appropriating ounces of minerals is often not seen as outright violence as it lays waste to the life support system that is our environment.

Designed to exclude civil society? That’s how it looks

By hosting this conference in London, not Africa, and charging exorbitant fees – £580 is the cheapest fee for non-member NGOs – Chatham House has effectively prevented the participation of African civil society and community members.

In doing so, the think tank has, intentionally or unintentionally, attempted to silence the people best able to describe the true costs of the extractive industries and to contest Chatham House’s conservative development narrative of ‘resource extraction = growth’.

Fearing that this may well be another Berlin Conference (1880) aimed at carving up and appropriating the African continent’s resources, we delivered an open letter from African Civil Society to conference organisers and participants on the afternoon of Monday 16th March.

In it we raise the voices of African communities and civil society and call upon Chatham House to show genuine leadership of thought. They must recognise that now is the time to think of the future of people and planet, not the health of the extractive industries.

Not a land grab – a continent grab!

Mining companies have learned new strategies for pulling the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting members of the public who invest in their stocks and thus back up the atrocious actions of these companies.

Through public-private partnerships with mining and fossil fuel companies, governments and other public bodies are sucked into unequal partnerships.

For the companies these partnerships offer legitimacy, a better image and a social license to operate as supposed agents of development. For public bodies and governments the equality of these relationships is merely illusory. A few will benefit, most will not.

Chatham House’s conference directly promotes such joint initiatives to give the extractive industries further access to Africa’s wealth. Yet it is clear that tactics such as public-private partnerships, so-called corporate social responsibility, good governance and transparency are too often mere green washing initiatives.

Despite these token efforts, Africa is experiencing new levels of ecosystem destruction and the intensification of poverty in impacted communities as part of what the No REDD Africa Network have described as a “continent grab“.

The time has come to challenge out-dated gatherings like that at Chatham House that exclude the voices of the people. We must move into the present by envisioning a fossil free future, reimagining our systems of design, consumption and use.

This cannot happen whilst we continue to sugar-coat destructive, unsustainable mining. The level of destruction already inflicted on Africa is nothing short of ecocide.

Rather than finding underhand ways to exploit new mineral and fossil fuel reserves in Africa, extractive companies should be challenged to invest in clean-up and environmental restoration activities.

These companies must not be allowed to position themselves as saviours when they have been the abusers of the African continent. They must be held accountable.

 

 

Read the letter to Chatham House from African Civil Society groups and their supporters here.

Nnimmo Bassey is a published poet, head of Home of Mother Earth Foundation, Nigeria and former Chair of Friends of the Earth International. He also runs Oilwatch International. Bassey’s poetry collections include ‘We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood’ (2002) and ‘I will Not Dance to Your Beat’ (Kraft Books, 2011). His latest book, ‘To Cook a Continent’ (Pambazuka Press, 2012) deals with destructive fossil fuel industries and the climate crisis in Africa. He was listed as one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2009 and won the 2010-Right Livelihood Award also known as the ‘Alternative Noble Prize.’

Sheila Berry is a psychologist and long time environmental justice activist from South Africa. She is currently fighting alongside South African communities in KwaZulu Natal to protect the iMfolozi Wilderness Area from Ibutho Coal’s plans to build Fuleni open-cast coal mine just 40m from the park’s edge.

Both Nnimmo and Sheila are members of Yes to life, No to Mining, a global solidarity movement of and for communities who wish to say no to mining out of a shared commitment to protect Earth for future generations.

 




391374

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

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In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

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In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

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In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003

Climate change sparked Syria’s ruinous war Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




In a dire chain of cause and effect, the drought that devastated parts of Syria from 2006 to 2010 was probably the result of climate change driven by human activities, a new study says.

And the study’s authors think that the drought may also have contributed to the outbreak of Syria’s uprising in 2011. The ensuing civil war has left at least 200,000 people dead, and has displaced millions of others.

The drought, which was the worst ever recorded in the region, ravaged agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to the cities where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created the unrest that exploded four years ago.

The study, by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors are clear that the climatic changes were human-driven (anthropogenic) and cannot be attributed simply to natural variability – but are careful to stress that their findings are tentative.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war”, says Richard Seager, one of the co-authors. “We’re saying that, added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

Climate link to violence

Their study, although it contains new material, is not the first to suggest a possible link between extreme weather and the likelihood of violence.

Some researchers have investigated whether there may be a link between El Niño and La Niña – the periodic Pacific weather disruptions – and outbreaks of unrest. Suggestions of a global connection between climate change and political instability is being taken seriously by two influential groups – insurers and military planners.

Syria was not the only country affected by the drought. It struck the Fertile Crescent, linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started around 12,000 years ago.

The Levant has always seen natural weather swings. Other research has suggested that the Akkadian empire, spanning much of the Fertile Crescent about 4,000 years ago, probably collapsed during a long drought.

But the authors of the Lamont-Doherty study, using existing studies and their own research, showed that the area has warmed by between 1°C and 1.2°C since 1900, and has undergone a 10% reduction in wet season precipitation. They say this trend is a neat match for models of human-influenced global warming, and so cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. And higher temperatures have increased the evaporation of moisture from soils during the hot summers.

Other researchers have observed the long-term drying trend across the Mediterranean region, and have attributed at least part of it to anthropogenic warming.

Government stuck with water-intensive cash crops

The government has also encouraged water-intensive export crops such as cotton, while illegal drilling of irrigation wells depleted groundwater, says co-author Shahrzad Mohtadi, an international affairs consultant at the US Department of State.

The drought’s effects were immediate and overwhelming. Agricultural production – typically, a quarter of Syria’s gross domestic product – fell by a third. In the northeast, livestock was practically wiped out, cereal prices doubled, and nutrition-related diseases among children increased steeply.

And Syria was especially vulnerable because of other factors – including a huge increase in population from four million in the 1950s to 22 million in recent years. As many as 1.5 million people fled from the countryside to cities already strained by waves of refugees from the war in neighbouring Iraq.

“Rapid demographic change encourages instability”, the authors say. “Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know, but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with pre-existing acute vulnerability.”

Solomon Hsiang, professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is “the first scientific paper to make the case that human-caused climate change is already altering the risk of large-scale social unrest and violence.”

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




391003