NOAA Bombshell-Human-caused climate change a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts

[kpete]

NOAA study: Human-caused climate change a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts
October 27, 2011


Winter precipitation trends in the Mediterranean region for the period 1902 - 2010.
High Resolution (Credit: NOAA)


Wintertime droughts are increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, and human-caused climate change is partly responsible, according to a new analysis by NOAA scientists and colleagues at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES). In the last 20 years, 10 of the driest 12 winters have taken place in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.

“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.”

The Mediterranean region accumulates most of its precipitation during the winter, and Hoerling’s team uncovered a pattern of increasing wintertime dryness that stretched from Gibraltar to the Middle East. Scientists used observations and climate models to investigate several possible culprits, including natural variability, a cyclical climate pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and climate change caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere during fossil fuel use and other human activities.

Climate change from greenhouse gases explained roughly half the increased dryness of 1902-2010, the team found. This means that other processes, none specifically identified in the new investigation, also have contributed to increasing drought frequency in the region.

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20111027_drought.html
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/10/27/355639/noaa-climate-change-mediterranean-droughts/

[kestrel91316]

1. K&R because Scott Olsen is getting all my attention tonight.

[Denninmi]

2. Well, now we know what government agency is next for the big budget cuts.

The Repukes will go after NOAA to try to silence them.