A study published by NASA found that a drought that has affected the Middle East’s Levant region – Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria – and Turkey since 1998 is likely the worst drought in the past 900 years resulting from human-induced climate change. The scientists, who published their paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, investigated the region’s drought history by studying the growth of three rings in the Mediterranean, indicating irregularity in drought patterns. “Thin rings indicate dry years while thick rings show years when water was plentiful,” the press release read. The drought, which was particularly acute in 2006-2007, was likely an effect of climate change spurred on by human activity. The changing climate, in turn, had an impact on societies living in the region. “If we look at recent events and we start to see anomalies that are outside this range of natural variability, then we can say with some confidence that it looks like this particular event or this series of events had some kind of human-caused climate change contribution,” said Ben Cook, lead author and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and…
Worst Middle East Drought in 900 Years Spurred by Climate Change: NASA
March 10, 2016
