SUDAN – The area of land surface affected by extreme drought has trebled since the 1980s, a new report into the effects of climate change has revealed. Forty-eight per cent of the Earth’s land surface had at least one month of extreme drought last year, according to analysis by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change – up from an average of 15% during the 1980s.
Almost a third of the world – 30% – experienced extreme drought for three months or longer in 2023. In the 1980s, the average was 5%. The new study offers some of the most up-to-date global data on drought, marking just how fast it is accelerating.
The threshold for extreme drought is reached after six months of very low rainfall or very high levels of evaporation from plants and soil – or both. It poses an immediate risk to water and sanitation, food security and public health, and can affect energy supplies, transportation networks and the economy. The causes of individual droughts are complicated, because there are lots of different factors that affect the availability of water, from natural weather events to the way humans use land.
But climate change is shifting global rainfall patterns, making some regions more prone to drought. The increase in drought has been particularly severe in South America, the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. In South America’s Amazon, drought is threatening to change weather patterns. It kills trees that have a role to play in stimulating rainclouds to form, which disrupts delicately balanced rainfall cycles – creating a feedback loop leading to further drought. (BBC)…[+]