2023-04-27 20:14:08
Fleeing drought, a group arrives at a refugee camp near Dolow, Somalia, September 21, 2022. Jerome Delay/AP
Without climate change, famine would not have plagued the region for more than two consecutive years.
Without global warming, caused by greenhouse gas emissions since the beginning of the industrial era, the terrible drought that has been raging since the end of 2020, in the Horn of Africa (which extends from Somalia Sudan, through Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti), would not have happened. Nothing less.
This is the conclusion announced on April 27 by researchers grouped within the WWA (World Weather Attribution), a group of universities which has been cooperating since 2015 to quickly assess whether or not extreme climatic events are caused by climate change. According to them, the rainfall had a weak beneficial effect on agricultural crops, livestock and people’s access to water because of the record temperatures observed.
Emergency aid requested
This situation would not have occurred in a world where the average temperature of the planet would have been 1.2°C lower than the level of current warming. Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia suffered their worst drought in almost 60 years. At least since 1964, note the scientists of the WWA; prior to that year, data on agricultural crops was sparse. It is therefore not possible to go back any further.
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This latest episode of drought in eastern Africa began with less than average rainfall during the short rainy season, from October to December 2020. Then this lack of rainfall continued for the two years that followed.
Despite recent rains in Kenya since March, the United Nations High Council for Refugees anticipates a sixth season of relatively mild rains. And the 19 researchers (South Africa, Germany, United States, Great Britain, Kenya, Mozambique and the Netherlands) who co-signed the WWA article do not foresee a reduction in famines before mid-2023. Emergency aid is requested by the United Nations for 3.3 million people in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia alone.
A careful assessment
“A conservative estimate is that a drought of this intensity and duration has a one in 100 chance of occurring” with the current climate change, note the scientists in their detailed report published on a register of Imperial College London. This assessment is conservative because “Current climate models underestimate the temperature rise we observe”says Friederike Otto, co-signer of the article and researcher at the Grantham Institute, at Imperial College.
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It is the rise in temperature measured in the Horn of Africa that has had the greatest impact, causing land evapotranspiration, drying up of crops and lower water availability for livestock and crops. populations. On the other hand, the relative weakness of tropical rains in the fall seems more related to the recurrent climatic phenomenon, La Niña, which lasted three years and is not attributable to warming.
Other extreme phenomena
Soil drying may combine with other extreme phenomena, such as heavier intense rains causing more frequent flooding. In November 2022, the WWA estimated that floods in West Africa in late spring 2022, including in Nigeria and Niger, were 80 times more likely to occur due to climate change.
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Faced with these marked changes, scientists are urging African countries to adapt. They advocate “the diversification of crops, the alleviation of poverty through social security systems and other sources of income, and of course, the reduction of conflicts”such as those affecting Sudan and Somalia.
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