Amazon 'faces more deadly droughts' - BBC

Last Updated: Friday, 23 March 2007, 16:04 GMT

Amazon 'faces more deadly droughts'
By James Painter
Latin America analyst

Two years ago the world was shocked by pictures of hundreds
of rotting fish floating in the world's second largest river.

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Did global warming cause the drought? How likely is it that
such droughts will be repeated in a warming world? And just
how much devastation did the drought cause?

There was broad consensus that the 2005 drought was linked
not to El Nino - the periodic phenomenon which begins with
a warming of waters in the Pacific - as with most previous
droughts in the Amazon, but to warming sea surface
temperatures in the tropical North Atlantic.

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So how often could such droughts happen?

The Hadley Centre climate change model predicts that, under
current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, the chances of
such a drought would rise from 5% now (one every 20 years)
to 50% by 2030, and to 90% by 2100.

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