Study: Don’t blame climate change for South American drought

Climate change is not responsible for the multi-year drought that is devastating parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia, but warmer temperatures are exacerbating some of the effects of the drought, a new study says.

The natural three-year La Niña climate – a cooling of the central Pacific Ocean that temporarily changes the weather around the world, but this time lasted much longer than usual – is the main culprit in the drought that devastated central South America and continues to this day. to a quick study released Thursday by international scientists from World Weather Attribution. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Drought has plagued the region since 2019, with Central Argentina last year having its driest year since 1960, widespread crop failure, and Uruguay declaring an agricultural emergency in October. Water supply and transport were also hampered.

“Precipitation does not signal climate change,” said study co-author Friederike Otto of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “But, of course, that doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t playing an important role in the context of these droughts. Due to the extreme temperature increase we are seeing, soils are drying out faster and the consequences are more severe than otherwise.”

The heat increased the evaporation of what little water, scientists say, exacerbating natural water shortages and exacerbating crop failure. The same group of scientists found that climate change made last December’s heat wave 60 times more likely.

And deforestation in the southern Amazon reached its highest level in a decade in 2020, meaning less moisture is available farther south in Argentina, said study lead author Paola Arias, a climatologist and professor at the University of Argentina’s School of the Environment. Antioquia in Colombia.

A team of scientists at World Weather Attribution are using observations and climate models to see if they find a factor in climate change in how frequent or severe extreme weather is. They compare what happened with how often it happened in the past and run computer simulations that contrast reality with what would happen in the world without anthropogenic climate change from burning fossil fuels.

The story goes on

In the case of this drought, the models actually show a small, not significant, increase in humidity due to climate change, but a clear link to La Niña, which scientists say is weakening. It will take months, if not more, for the region to come out of the drought — and it depends on whether the other side of La Niña, El Niño, emerges, said study co-author Juan Rivera, a scientist at the Argentine Institute for Snow Research, Glaciology and Environmental Sciences. environment.

In the past, a team of scientists have found no obvious link to climate change in some droughts and floods, but have found that global warming is a factor in most of the severe weather they investigate.

“One of the reasons we do these attribution studies is to show what the real impacts of climate change are. And it’s not that climate change is making things worse,” Otto said. “Not all the bad things that are happening now are due to climate change.”

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Learn more about AP’s climate and environment at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. Learn more about the AP Climate Initiative here. AP is solely responsible for all content.

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