2017 saw some of the worst wildfires on record in the western United States, and if the earth continues warming, we should expect more like them, says a new study.
Research findings published Monday in Nature Climate Change said that over a quarter of the earth’s land would become significantly drier with a 2ºC rise in temperature — but that limiting global warming to under 1.5ºC could significantly reduce the amount of land affected.
The research team reached these conclusions after studying projections from 27 global climate models to identify the parts of the world that aridifcation would impact.
Aridification, explains Dr. Chang-Eui Park from SusTech, “can critically impact such areas as agriculture, water quality, and biodiversity.
It can also lead to more droughts and wildfires – similar to those seen raging across California.” It can also lead to more severe droughts, which are already becoming a problem across many regions of the world, including the Mediterranean, southern Africa, and eastern coast of Australia.
The human impacts of this are dire; drier climates are linked to resource wars, food shortages, and famine.
One of the world’s worst ongoing conflicts, the war in Syria, for example, is at least partially linked to a 2006 drought that led to a massive rural-urban migration of farmers, putting additional strain on Syrian cities and, combined with other factors, leading to uprising.
Every other country in the world, except the United States has signed onto this goal — including Syria.
You’ve made it to the end of the article.
Nice.