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Climate Change Is Causing Severe Drought in a Volatile Mideast Zone, Study Finds [1]
['Manuela Andreoni', 'More About Manuela Andreoni']
Date: 2023-11-08
Human-made climate change is driving a yearslong extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, an area that encompasses a region known as the Fertile Crescent and a cradle of civilization, scientists said on Wednesday.
The scientists stressed that years of conflict and political instability combined with the challenges of rapid urbanization in the region have limited the ability of local communities to respond to the drought, transforming it into a humanitarian crisis.
In the last three years, the drought, the second worst on record, has shriveled wheat crops and led to tensions between neighboring countries and communities over access to dwindling water supplies. It has also displaced tens of thousands of people, and helped push millions into hunger.
The crisis is evidence of how global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels can act “as a threat multiplier,” said Rana El Hajj, a technical adviser at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center in Lebanon, and one of the 10 authors of the study. It was put out by the World Weather Attribution initiative, an international scientific collaboration that specializes in rapid analysis of extreme weather events.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/climate/climate-change-drought-fertile-crescent.html
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