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The historic drought affecting the Horn of Africa is an unprecedented combination of lack of rain and high temperatures. A scientific study shows that this would not have happened without the effects of greenhouse gas emissions

“Climate change caused by human activities has made agricultural droughts in the Horn of Africa 100 times greater than before,” the World Weather Attribution (WWA) said in a report on Thursday. Between extreme weather events and climate change.

Since the end of 2020, the countries of the Greater Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya and Sudan), a large peninsula in the east of the continent, have experienced the worst drought in forty years.

Five rainy seasons with scarcity

Five consecutive monsoons have killed lakhs of cattle and ruined crops. According to the UN, 22 million people are threatened with starvation in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia (where there is also an Islamist insurgency).

According to the 19 scientists who contributed to the report, climate change had “little impact on recent annual rainfall” in the region. But it strongly affected the rise in temperature, which caused a sharp increase in evapotranspiration, which led to a record drying of soil and vegetation.

“Climate change is what has made this drought so severe and so exceptional,” Joyce Kimoutai, a Kenyan climatologist contributing to the report, said in a telephone conference on Wednesday.

Founded by renowned climatologists, the WWA network has established itself in recent years by its ability to assess the interplay between extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts. Caused climate change.

Altered monsoons

Its results, produced in haste, are published without going through the lengthy process of peer-reviewed journals, but combining peer-reviewed methods with historical weather data and climate models.

At the moment, WWA is focusing its research on the three most affected countries (southern Ethiopia and Somalia and eastern Kenya).

He found that climate change is changing the two rainy seasons in opposite directions: the heaviest between March and May, “becomes drier and the precipitation doubles”, while “the shorter season becomes wetter”.

But in recent years, “this slight seasonally wet trend has been masked by the climate-cycling phenomenon of La Niña” which reduces tropical rain and, to date, there is no evidence that it is affected by anthropogenic climate change.

In a region that has had five rainy seasons since the end of 2020, this rare combination, combined with subsequent temperature increases, has caused record drying of soil and vegetation.

5% is likely to occur every year

If the planet had not already warmed 1.2 degrees compared to the pre-industrial era, this rain would subject the region to conditions, at worst, “‘abnormally dry,'” the U.S. classification below the first degree of drought severity, WWA assures.

Clearly, “climate change was a necessary condition for such severe droughts to occur,” the scientists conclude.

The current situation is described as an “exceptional drought”, the 4th and final level of warning in the US. Unlike before, there is now a 5% chance of breeding each year.

This article was published automatically. Sources: ats / afp