Climate Change Not Cause of Madagascar Drought, Analysis Findings


In the Indian Ocean country of Madagascar, years of low rainfall have ruined the harvest and left hundreds of thousands of people uncertain about their next meal. Aid groups say the situation there is nearing its end. humanitarian disaster.

But human-induced climate change does not appear to be the driving force, a team of climate scientists said Wednesday.

In the hard-hit south of Madagascar, precipitation naturally fluctuates quite a lot, and a warming climate does not make prolonged droughts significantly more likely, the researchers said.

Even so, they stressed that the island should still aim to strengthen its ability to deal with dry spells. Scientists convened by the United Nations They determined that if global average temperatures increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius, droughts in Madagascar as a whole will increase – a warming level of more than 1.2 degrees considered in the new analysis.

Average global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. The scientists said nations should try to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit; Beyond this threshold, they say, it significantly increases the likelihood of catastrophic fires, floods, droughts, heat waves and other disasters. Flow policies will keep the planet pace with a warming of about 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

“What this shows is that current climate variability is causing serious human suffering,” said Maarten van Aalst, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center and one of 20 scientists involved in the Madagascar study. “In such places, anything that climate change will make worse becomes a really big additional problem very quickly.”

Madagascar, a large island off the east coast of Africa, is known for its sandy beaches, emerald waters, and ring-tailed lemurs. But low rainfall since 2019 in the southwestern tip of the country known as Le Grand Sud or the Deep South has left this part of the island in a dire situation.

more than 1.3 million peopleAccording to the United Nations, nearly half of Grand Sud’s population experiences high levels of food insecurity. Half a million children under the age of 5 are at risk of severe malnutrition.

Climate researchers estimate the chance of such a long dry spell to occur in that part of Madagascar in any given year is one in 135.

Environmental degradation exacerbated the effects of the drought. Sandstorms fueled by deforestation have devastated croplands and pastures. A locust epidemic threatens further destruction.

The inhabitants of Grand Sud were forced to eat grass, leaves and even clay to survive. United Nations World Food Program found. Children drop out of school to help their families fodder for food. Amnesty International has collected testimonies. Some people think they are starving.

The analysis of the drought was carried out by an international scientific collaboration. World Weather Relation Initiative that specializes in identifying links between climate change and individual weather events. The group carries out such analyzes with an unusual speed in the scientific publishing world: It aims to bring healthy science to the public while events are still fresh in the minds.

The team’s Madagascar study did not undergo peer review, but peer-reviewed methods. Essentially, the approach is to use computer simulations to compare the current world, where humans are pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, with a hypothetical world without this activity.

It may seem counterintuitive that global warming does not contribute to a net increase in the likelihood of drought. But scientists have discovered that the relationship is not that simple. Climate change often causes more intense rain events, but it also changes precipitation patterns.

Dr. “Drought has many dimensions,” van Aalst said. “It’s not that simple, how much precipitation do you get on average annually? The question is, do you distribute it nicely, or do you take large quantities at once? Are you taking it in the right seasons?”

“We have to be a little careful,” he added, “and we’re just drawing a very straight line from our precipitation observations or forecasts to what people are ultimately exposed to.”

World Weather Attribution has linked other extreme weather events to human-induced climate change in recent years. group, write this extraordinary heat wave The Pacific Northwest almost certainly wouldn’t exist without it.

Piotr Wolski, of the Climate System Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said that for climate scientists, “droughts are a combination of factors that are much more difficult to deal with than heat waves, for example.”

Also working on the Madagascar research, Dr. “We have this dominant narrative these days that droughts are largely due to anthropogenic climate change,” Wolski said. “It’s not a bad narrative, because they are—just not everywhere, not in every situation.”

In Madagascar, who was not involved in the study, livelihoods are easily destabilized by wild fluctuations in precipitation, said Daniel Osgood, a research scientist at Columbia University’s International Climate and Society Research Institute.

Dr. Osgood is working on a project to provide growers in Madagascar with affordable drought insurance. The goal is to help them be more resilient to the economic shocks that the weather can bring. “It’s not how much you eat on average,” he said. “What really makes a difference is how much you eat each night.”



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