Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, vol. 112 no. 11, pp. 3241–3246

  Available online: http://preventionweb.net/go/46408

This paper presents evidence on how the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone.

Language(s): English

Tags: Climate change ; Food Safety ; Agroclimatology ; Syrian Arab Republic Add tag