Global warming drove record Amazon rainforest drought, study finds
Al Jazeera
New report says climate change responsible for draining rivers, wreaking havoc on biodiversity and communities.
Climate change, and not El Nino, was the primary driver of the unprecedented drought last year in the Amazon rainforest that caused rivers to dry up, required deliveries of essential supplies to river communities and resulted in the deaths of endangered dolphins, scientists have said.
A report released on Wednesday by World Weather Attribution, an international network of scientists, showed that human-induced global warming was draining waterways in the world’s largest rainforest, killing hundreds of endangered dolphins and isolating millions of people who rely on the region’s waterways for food, transport and income.
Scientists studied events from June to November last year, finding that global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels had made drought 30 times more likely, producing the extreme temperatures that have caused water levels to slump to their lowest points on record.
The effects of climate change on the region are twofold, reducing rainfall, but also producing hotter conditions that evaporate moisture from plants and soil, increasing the severity of the drought.
While both climate change and El Nino contributed about equally to a reduction in rainfall, higher global temperatures were the biggest reason for the drought, according to the study.
