SYRIA, IRAN AND IRAQ’S DROUGHTS ARE DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE SAYS A NEW STUDY 

In the Middle Eastern region, droughts aren’t unusual, especially the Syrian civil war makes the region more prone to droughts. A latest study mentions that the three-year droughts in Syria, Iran and Iraq would not have happened if we did not cause climate change.

The man-made global warming has led to suffering for millions of people in Iraq, Syria and Iran due to droughts. The droughts in the Middle Eastern region started in July, 2020.

The very little rain the region got evaporated due to temperatures higher than normal, according to a study at World Weather Attribution by a group of international climate scientists.

Friederike Otto, a climate change scientist at Imperial College of London and lead author of the study said, “Without the world warming 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid-19th century, “it would not be a drought at all.”

The research concluded that unnatural drying of the region due to climate change has caused a humanitarian crisis where people are thirsty, hungry and displaced. The research was based on valid scientific techniques to review footprints of global warming.

The team of scientists took note of rainfall, temperature and moisture levels and this data was compared with the last three years in multiple computer simulation situations where a world without humans existed.  As per the result, this condition would not have happened if humans did not exist.

So global warming is a man-made crisis. Mohammed Rahimi, who is the co-author of the study and a professor of climatology in Iran said, “Human-caused global climate change is already making life considerably harder for tens of millions of people in West Asia.

With every degree of warming Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even harder places to live. ”According to Otto, although computer simulation did not find much change in rainfall conditions due to climate change. But water from lakes, rivers, soil and wetland “was much higher than it would have been” due to rise in temperature in the region.