And now, a new NOAA study shows that wintertime droughts are becming increasingly common in the region, and human-caused climate change is partly responsible. In the last 20 years, the Mediterranean region has experienced 10 of the driest 12 winters on record, according to data compiled by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).
“The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone," said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder. Hoerling is the lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month.
“This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal."
The Mediterranean region accumulates most of its precipitation during the winter, and Hoerling's team uncovered a pattern of increasing wintertime dryness that stretched from Gibraltar to the Middle East.
Scientists used observations and climate models to investigate several possible culprits, including natural variability, a cyclical climate pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and climate change caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere during fossil fuel use and other human activities.
Climate change from greenhouse gases explained roughly half the increased dryness of 1902-2010, the team found. This means that other processes, none specifically identified in the new investigation, also have contributed to increasing drought frequency in the region. Read the full report here.
Source: by Bob Berwyn, Summit County Citizens Voice.
