Drought threatening the lives of millions will spread across half the land
surface of the Earth in the coming century because of global warming, according
to new predictions from Britain's leading climate scientists.
Extreme drought, in which agriculture is in effect impossible, will affect about
a third of the planet, according to the study from the Met Office's Hadley
Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
It is one of the most dire forecasts so far of the potential effects of rising
temperatures around the world - yet it may be an underestimation, the scientists
involved said yesterday.
The findings, released at the Climate Clinic at the Conservative Party
conference in Bournemouth, drew astonished and dismayed reactions from aid
agencies and development specialists, who fear that the poor of developing
countries will be worst hit.
"This is genuinely terrifying," said Andrew Pendleton of Christian Aid. "It is a
death sentence for many millions of people. It will mean migration off the land
at levels we have not seen before, and at levels poor countries cannot cope
with."
One of Britain's leading experts on the effects of climate change on the
developing countries, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation, said:
"There's almost no aspect of life in the developing countries that these
predictions don't undermine - the ability to grow food, the ability to have a
safe sanitation system, the availability of water. For hundreds of millions of
people for whom getting through the day is already a struggle, this is going to
push them over the precipice."
The findings represent the first time that the threat of increased drought from
climate change has been quantified with a supercomputer climate model such as
the one operated by the Hadley Centre.
Their impact is likely to even greater because the findings may be an
underestimate. The study did not include potential effects on drought from
global-warming-induced changes to the Earth's carbon cycle.
In one unpublished Met Office study, when the carbon cycle effects are included,
future drought is even worse.
The results are regarded as most valid at the global level, but the clear
implication is that the parts of the world already stricken by drought, such as
Africa, will be the places where the projected increase will have the most
severe effects.
The study, by Eleanor Burke and two Hadley Centre colleagues, models how a
measure of drought known as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) is likely
to increase globally during the coming century with predicted changes in
rainfall and heat around the world because of climate change. It shows the PDSI
figure for moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth's surface,
rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about
8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3
per cent, rising to 30 per cent.
Senior Met Office scientists are sensitive about the study, funded by the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stressing it contains
uncertainties: there is only one climate model involved, one future scenario for
emissions of greenhouse gases (a moderate-to-high one) and one drought index.
Nevertheless, the result is "significant", according to Vicky Pope, the head of
the Hadley Centre's climate programme. Further work would now be taking place to
try to assess the potential risk of different levels of drought in different
places, she said.
The full study - Modelling the Recent Evolution of Global Drought and
Projections for the 21st Century with the Hadley Centre Climate Model - will be
published later this month in The Journal of Hydrometeorology .
It will be widely publicised by the British Government at the negotiations in
Nairobi in November on a successor to the Kyoto climate treaty. But a preview of
it was given by Dr Burke in a presentation to the Climate Clinic, which was
formed by environmental groups, with The Independent as media partner, to press
politicians for tougher action on climate change. The Climate Clinic has been in
operation at all the party conferences.
While the study will be seen as a cause for great concern, it is the figure for
the increase in extreme drought that some observers find most frightening.
"We're talking about 30 per cent of the world's land surface becoming
essentially uninhabitable in terms of agricultural production in the space of a
few decades," Mark Lynas, the author of High Tide, the first major account of
the visible effects of global warming around the world, said. "These are parts
of the world where hundreds of millions of people will no longer be able to feed
themselves."
Mr Pendleton said: "This means you're talking about any form of development
going straight out of the window. The vast majority of poor people in the
developing world are small-scale farmers who... rely on rain."
A glimpse of what lies ahead
The sun beats down across northern Kenya's Rift Valley, turning brown what was
once green. Farmers and nomadic herders are waiting with bated breath for the
arrival of the "short" rains - a few weeks of intense rainfall that will ensure
their crops grow and their cattle can eat.
The short rains are due in the next month. Last year they never came; large
swaths of the Horn of Africa stayed brown. From Ethiopia and Eritrea, through
Somalia and down into Tanzania, 11 million people were at risk of hunger.
This devastating image of a drought-ravaged region offers a glimpse of what lies
ahead for large parts of the planet as global warming takes hold.
In Kenya, the animals died first. The nomadic herders' one source of sustenance
and income - their cattle - perished with nothing to eat and nothing to drink.
Bleached skeletons of cows and goats littered the barren landscape.
The number of food emergencies in Africa each year has almost tripled since the
1980s. Across sub-Saharan Africa, one in three people is under-nourished. Poor
governance has played a part.
Pastoralist communities suffer most, rather than farmers and urban dwellers.
Nomadic herders will walk for weeks to find a water hole or riverbed. As
resources dwindle, fighting between tribes over scarce resources becomes common.
One of the most critical issues is under-investment in pastoralist areas. Here,
roads are rare, schools and hospitals almost non-existent.
Nomadic herders in Turkana, northern Kenya, who saw their cattle die last year,
are making adjustments to their way of life. When charities offerednew cattle,
they said no. Instead, they asked for donkeys and camels - animals more likely
to survive hard times.
Pastoralists have little other than their animals to rely on. But projects which
provide them with money to buy food elsewhere have proved effective, in the
short term at least.