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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

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

How does multiple climate variables and consumer diversity loss together “filter” natural communities? Updated for 2026

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eklc3b6f2

As the oceans gradually become warmer and more acidified, an increasing number of studies test the effects of climate change on marine organisms. As most climate change experiments have studied effects of single climate variables on single species, more and more researchers ask themselves how this lack of realism affects our ability to accurately assess and predict effects of climate change (Wernberg et al. 2012). Interestingly, theory and a growing body of studies suggests that different climate variables can strongly interact (Kroeker et al. 2013), that climate effects can change with presence/absence of strong consumers (Alsterberg et al. 2013), and that effects on communities are more informative than those on single species, as they allow experimenters to assess what traits that makes organisms sensitive or resistant (Berg et al. 2010). In our new paper “Community-level effects of rapid experimental warming and consumer loss outweigh effects of rapid ocean acidification” we found that warming and simulated consumer loss in seagrass mesocosms both increased macrofauna diversity, largely by favoring epifaunal organisms with fast population growth and poor defenses against predators.

Eklöf1

These results corroborate theory, and exemplify how trait- and life-history based approaches can be used to in more detail understand – and potentially predict – effects of climate change. Meanwhile, simulated ocean acidification (pH 7.75 vs. 8.10) had no detectable short-term effects on any of the investigated variables, including organisms with calcium-carbonate shell. While this lack of effect may be partly explained by the short duration of our experiment and/or the relatively crude endpoints, seagrass-associated macrofauna routinely experience diurnal pH variability that exceed predicted changes in mean pH over the coming century (Saderne et al. 2013). Consequently, by living in a variable pH these organisms could be relatively resilient to ocean acidification (see e.g. Frieder et al. 2014). In summary, it seems that at least in the short term, rapid warming and changes in consumer populations are likely to have considerably stronger effects than ocean acidification on macrofauna communities in shallow vegetated ecosystems.

References cited above:

Alsterberg, C., Eklöf, J. S., Gamfeldt, L., Havenhand, J. and Sundbäck, K. 2013. Consumers mediate the effects of experimental ocean acidification and warming on primary producers. – PNAS 110: 8603-8608.

Berg, M. P., Kiers, E. T., Driessen, G., van der Heijden, M., Kooi, B. W., Kuenen, F., Liefting, M., Verhoef, H. A. and Ellers, J. 2010. Adapt or disperse: understanding species persistence in a changing world. – Global Change Biol 16: 587-598.

Frieder, C. A., Gonzalez, J. P., Bockmon, E. E., Navarro, M. O. and Levin, L. A. 2014. Can variable pH and low oxygen moderate ocean acidification outcomes for mussel larvae? – 20: 754-764.

Kroeker, K. J., Kordas, R. L., Crim, R., Hendriks, I. E., Ramajo, L., Singh, G. S., Duarte, C. M. and Gattuso, J.-P. 2013. Impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms: quantifying sensitivities and interaction with warming. – Glob. Change Biol. 19: 1884-1896.

Saderne, V., Fietzek, P. and Herman, P. M. J. 2013. Extreme Variations of pCO2 and pH in a Macrophyte Meadow of the Baltic Sea in Summer: Evidence of the Effect of Photosynthesis and Local Upwelling. – PloS ONE 8: e62689.

Wernberg, T., Smale, D. A. and Thomsen, M. S. 2012. A decade of climate change experiments on marine organisms: procedures, patterns and problems. – Glob. Change Biol. 18: 1491-1498.

 

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US tax dollars must not finance $1bn Great Barrier Reef destruction! Updated for 2026

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The US Export-Import Bank is on the verge of financing one of the world’s most destructive projects: India-based Adani Group’s massive Carmichael coal mine in Australia’s Galilee Basin.

The project also includes a new railway to carry the coal to a new export terminal at Abbots Point, Queensland, and a new sea ‘canal’ dredged through the Great Barrier Reef to allow the passage of coal freighters.

But a determined coalition of scientists, business owners, Australian elected officials, and civil society groups from the US and Australia have called ‘foul’ in a letter to US Export-Import Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg.

“The Adani coal project alone is expected to result in an estimated 7.6 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over its lifetime”, the letter states. “Damage to the Great Barrier Reef has also resulted from reckless coastal industrial development, such as massive ports and liquefied natural gas complexes that have compelled UNESCO to consider classifying the reef as a ‘World Heritage in Danger‘.

“This includes two liquefied natural gas projects that received nearly five billion dollars in public financing from the Export Import Bank under your direction. In our view, this financing violates US law , as may US government financing for Adani’s coal export project.”

Friends of the Earth US President Erich Pica said: “Chairman Hochberg should refuse to provide financing to any project that would harm the precious Great Barrier Reef. To do otherwise would contradict President Obama’s call to protect this special place for his daughters and grandchildren and his State of the Union address, at which he called climate change the biggest threat to future generations.”

One mine – three countries’ CO2

Aside from the immediate environmental destruction, the project would cause 128 million tons of carbon pollution annually – more than Sweden, Norway, and Denmark combined, contradicting the spirit of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan and recent climate progress both in the US and abroad.

A decision to finance the Carmichael project would also undermine US credibility on climate issues at home and abroad, including the including the US-China emissions reduction deal, a $3 billion commitment to the Green Climate Fund, and recent climate and clean energy progress in the President’s FY2016 budget.

And it would infuriate the generations of climate campaigners that were out protesting around the world last weekend on Global Divestment Day, organised by 350.org, which called on investors, pension funds, foundations and financial institutions everywhere to dump fossil fuels.

Three million tonnes of Barrier Reef seabed to be removed and dumped

If completed, coal will be mined and transported by rail to the coast, where it will be shipped overseas through ports expanded by dredging three million tonnes of seabed from the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef.

“The Great Barrier Reef is under considerable threat from a variety of stressors including climate change, crown of thorns sea stars, and runoff from land”, said Dr. Selina Ward, a prominent Queensland Reef scientist at the University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences.

“The Abbot Point port expansion would considerably exacerbate this pressure. This continuing industrialisation of the GBR coastline invites reef degradation, especially from the dredging of the ocean floor, the dumping of the dredge spoil and the enormous increase in carbon emissions from the proposed coal mines.”

The recent January 31 election in the State of Queensland saw the biggest swing against a first term government in Australia since 1955. Many Queenslanders rejected the sitting government due to its support for the Galilee Basin coal mines and associated port facilities and their impacts on the Great Barrier Reef.

The Greens achieved their highest ever Queensland election result, and Labor is now forming a government, after that party pledged to prevent any dredge spoil from being dumped in the World Heritage Area or nearby wetlands and to reverse the billions in tax breaks and tax dollar support the previous government promised Adani.

“Queenslanders clearly do not accept the government’s destruction of the Reef”, said Greens Senator Larissa Waters of Queensland. “The Queensland Government’s plans to industrialise the Reef threaten to destroy one of the most precious places on earth, through dredging, shipping and climate change.

“We call on the US Ex-Im Bank to reject any requests for financing of the Abbot Point expansion or associated rail and mine infrastructure. US taxpayer dollars should not be subsidising the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.”

And it’s an economic disaster too, conclude major banks

And while Ex-Im is considering backing the project, major financial institutions – including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, Credit Agricole, and JPMorgan Chase – have publicly rejected the proposal.

They don’t like the fact that the project would jeopardize the Reef’s World Heritage status. But even more serious for potential financiers, reports show the project is not financially viable.

“The fact is that this disastrous project would damage a world treasure like the Great Barrier Reef while making our climate crisis even worse. The notion that Ex-Im would use American taxpayer dollars to support it is unconscionable”, said John Coequyt, director of the Sierra Club’s International Climate Program.

“If the Export-Import bank puts a single US dollar towards funding this project, it is literally financing the destruction of one of the great natural wonders of the world.”

 

 

Principal source: Friends of the Earth.

 

 




390497

Southwest USA faces long term ‘megadroughts’ this century Updated for 2026

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The Central Plains and Southwest region of the US face “unprecedented” droughts later this century, according to new research.

While Midwest states have experienced ever more flooding over the last 50 years, the regions already suffering from extremes of aridity are being warned to expect megadroughts worse than any conditions in the last 1,000 years.

Climate scientist Benjamin Cook, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues report in a new journal, Science Advances, that they looked at historical evidence, climate projections and ways of calculating soil moisture.

They found that the drought conditions of the future American west will be more severe than the hottest, most arid extended droughts of the 12th and 13th centuries – an unusually warm period climatologists call the Medieval Climatic Anomaly – which brought an end to the once-flourishing Ancient Pueblo culture of the American Southwest, forcing the people to migrate to other areas.

They report: “We have demonstrated that the mean state of drought in the late 21st century over the Central Plains and Southwest will likely exceed even the most severe megadrought periods of the Medieval era in both high and moderate future emissions scenarios, representing an unprecedented fundamental climate shift with respect to the last millennium.

“Notably, the drying in our assessment is robust across models and moisture balance metrics. Our analysis thus contrasts sharply with the recent emphasis on uncertainty about drought projections for these regions, including the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.”

A remarkably drier future far outside the contemporary experience

The growth rings of trees provided the evidence for reconstructions of what climatologists call the warm Medieval period, and the researchers matched the picture from the past with 17 different computer model predictions of the climate later in the 21st century.

The conclusions were ominous: nearly all the models predicted that the Plains and the Southwest would become drier than at any time in the last 1,000 years.

Even though winter rain and snowfall could increase in parts of California – currently in the grip of calamitous drought – in the decades to come, overall there will be lower cold season precipitation and, because of higher temperatures, ever more evaporation and ever more water demand for the surviving vegetation.

The authors conclude: “Ultimately, the consistency of our results suggests an exceptionally high risk of a multidecadal megadrought occurring over the Central Plains and Southwest regions during the late 21st century, a level of aridity exceeding even the persistent megadroughts that characterised the Medieval era.

“Our results point to a remarkably drier future that falls far outside the contemporary experience of natural and human systems in Western North America, conditions that may present a substantial challenge to adaptation.

“Human populations in this region, and their associated water resources demands, have been increasing rapidly in recent decades, and these trends are expected to continue for years to come.

“Future droughts will occur in a significantly warmer world with higher temperatures than recent historical events, conditions that are likely to be a major added stress on both natural ecosystems and agriculture.”

Co-author Toby Ault, head of the Emergent Climate Risk Lab at Cornell University, warned of future megadroughts only last year. He says: “I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be.”

And to the north, more frequent severe floods

But to the north, in the American Midwest, conditions have begun to change in a different way. Iman Mallakour and Gabriele Villarini, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, collected evidence from 774 stream gauges in 14 states from 1962 to 2011.

The region was hit by economically-disastrous, billion-dollar floods in 1993, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014. The researchers wanted to see whether flooding was really on the increase, or whether perception of greater flooding was what they called “an artefact of our relatively short collective memory.”

They report in Nature Climate Change that a third of them had recorded a greater number of flood events, and only one in 10 recorded a decrease. The pattern of increase extended from North Dakota south to Iowa and Missouri, and east to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

“While observational records from the central United States present limited evidence of significant changes in the magnitude of floodpeaks, strong evidence points to an increasing frequency of flooding”, the paper explains. “These changes in flood hydrology result from changes in both seasonal rainfall and temperature across this region.”

The result is a confirmation of the perceived increase, says Dr Villarini: “It’s not that big floods are getting bigger, but that we have been experiencing a larger number of big floods.”

 

 

The papers:

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




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Southwest USA faces long term ‘megadroughts’ this century Updated for 2026

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The Central Plains and Southwest region of the US face “unprecedented” droughts later this century, according to new research.

While Midwest states have experienced ever more flooding over the last 50 years, the regions already suffering from extremes of aridity are being warned to expect megadroughts worse than any conditions in the last 1,000 years.

Climate scientist Benjamin Cook, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues report in a new journal, Science Advances, that they looked at historical evidence, climate projections and ways of calculating soil moisture.

They found that the drought conditions of the future American west will be more severe than the hottest, most arid extended droughts of the 12th and 13th centuries – an unusually warm period climatologists call the Medieval Climatic Anomaly – which brought an end to the once-flourishing Ancient Pueblo culture of the American Southwest, forcing the people to migrate to other areas.

They report: “We have demonstrated that the mean state of drought in the late 21st century over the Central Plains and Southwest will likely exceed even the most severe megadrought periods of the Medieval era in both high and moderate future emissions scenarios, representing an unprecedented fundamental climate shift with respect to the last millennium.

“Notably, the drying in our assessment is robust across models and moisture balance metrics. Our analysis thus contrasts sharply with the recent emphasis on uncertainty about drought projections for these regions, including the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.”

A remarkably drier future far outside the contemporary experience

The growth rings of trees provided the evidence for reconstructions of what climatologists call the warm Medieval period, and the researchers matched the picture from the past with 17 different computer model predictions of the climate later in the 21st century.

The conclusions were ominous: nearly all the models predicted that the Plains and the Southwest would become drier than at any time in the last 1,000 years.

Even though winter rain and snowfall could increase in parts of California – currently in the grip of calamitous drought – in the decades to come, overall there will be lower cold season precipitation and, because of higher temperatures, ever more evaporation and ever more water demand for the surviving vegetation.

The authors conclude: “Ultimately, the consistency of our results suggests an exceptionally high risk of a multidecadal megadrought occurring over the Central Plains and Southwest regions during the late 21st century, a level of aridity exceeding even the persistent megadroughts that characterised the Medieval era.

“Our results point to a remarkably drier future that falls far outside the contemporary experience of natural and human systems in Western North America, conditions that may present a substantial challenge to adaptation.

“Human populations in this region, and their associated water resources demands, have been increasing rapidly in recent decades, and these trends are expected to continue for years to come.

“Future droughts will occur in a significantly warmer world with higher temperatures than recent historical events, conditions that are likely to be a major added stress on both natural ecosystems and agriculture.”

Co-author Toby Ault, head of the Emergent Climate Risk Lab at Cornell University, warned of future megadroughts only last year. He says: “I was honestly surprised at just how dry the future is likely to be.”

And to the north, more frequent severe floods

But to the north, in the American Midwest, conditions have begun to change in a different way. Iman Mallakour and Gabriele Villarini, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Iowa, collected evidence from 774 stream gauges in 14 states from 1962 to 2011.

The region was hit by economically-disastrous, billion-dollar floods in 1993, 2008, 2011, 2013 and 2014. The researchers wanted to see whether flooding was really on the increase, or whether perception of greater flooding was what they called “an artefact of our relatively short collective memory.”

They report in Nature Climate Change that a third of them had recorded a greater number of flood events, and only one in 10 recorded a decrease. The pattern of increase extended from North Dakota south to Iowa and Missouri, and east to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.

“While observational records from the central United States present limited evidence of significant changes in the magnitude of floodpeaks, strong evidence points to an increasing frequency of flooding”, the paper explains. “These changes in flood hydrology result from changes in both seasonal rainfall and temperature across this region.”

The result is a confirmation of the perceived increase, says Dr Villarini: “It’s not that big floods are getting bigger, but that we have been experiencing a larger number of big floods.”

 

 

The papers:

Tim Radford writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




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