Climate change contributes to worst Middle East drought in 900 years

The drought's impact could have had a role in creating political unrest and upheaval, experts say

-
Canoes are seen in the shallow waters of the Chibayish marshes near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on 25 June 2015 (AFP)

A recently published NASA study found that the Levant region – Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – currently suffers from the worst drought in 900 years as a result of climate change.

“Basically, we used a dataset of dry variability from the region that goes back, with reasonably good accuracy, to 1100 AD, and from that we were able to estimate that the recent drought in the Eastern part of the Mediterranean looks like it was the worst, or driest drought anytime in the last 900 years,” Benjamin Cook, one of the leading authors of the study and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Middle East Eye.

The drought, which began in 1998, became particularly severe between 2007-2010, experts told MEE.

The researchers, who had their paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, studied the growth of tree rings in the region to determine drought variability across the Mediterranean, which helps understand the region’s climate, according to a NASA publication on the paper.

- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/climate-change-contributes-worst-drought-middle-east-over-900-years-487878483#sthash.4stSSmGv.dpuf