For about 30 years - in the seventies and eighties of the last century, the rains stopped in the Sahel. It was the worst known drought in modern times. The drought caused an increase in the migration of farmers and shepherds from the rural areas to the cities (and also to Europe and us). Millions starved and died.
Many of us remember the harsh images of the famine in the Sahel (the region south of the Sahara). Most of the photos came from Ethiopia, but all the inhabitants of the Sahelian strip suffered and many did not survive.
For about 30 years - in the seventies and eighties of the last century, the rains stopped in the Sahel. It was the worst known drought in modern times. The drought caused an increase in the migration of farmers and shepherds from the rural areas to the cities (and also to Europe and us). Millions starved and died.
One of the most prominent results (on the ground) of the long drought is the drying up of Lake Chad, whose waters fed and fed millions and turned into a barren puddle during the drought. Now the cause of the long drought has been found. Drought periods are not unusual in the arid regions. Every few years the rains stop for a season or two and then return, saturating the soil and enabling the renewal of life for the flora, fauna and people.
But in the 70s and 80s of the last century, the rains stopped and did not resume for about thirty years. The whole world's attention was drawn to the terrible disaster. Food deliveries were a drop in the ocean and did not change the situation. It wasn't until the 90s that the rains returned intermittently and in a variable cycle that was enough to "break" the drought.
According to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, the cause of the long drought is pollution in the northern hemisphere that originates mainly in North America and Europe. Sulfide spray particles caused cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, which caused the equatorial rains to move south. Most of the sulfur sprays were emitted from power plants - from burning coal.
Frierson, a climatologist from the University of Washington in Seattle who participated in the study, says that "even distant changes had an effect in the equatorial regions." At the time, no attention was paid to the relative cooling that was masked by global warming, and the "experts" determined that the causes of the drought were overgrazing and poor management in agricultural areas. But in the last decade, researchers have noticed the significant effect that polluting sprays have on the climate. In parts of the atmosphere, the tiny aerosol particles reflect the sunlight that causes cooling. The effect of the sulfuric sprays is local, short-lived and concentrated in areas where the pollution is high, but the effect spreads to other areas.
To understand the global climate model, the researchers followed the rainfall data from measurement points between 1930 and 1990. The researchers noticed a strip where heavy rain falls, the "Intertropical Convergence Zone". It turned out that between the years 1930 and 1950 the strip moved south or north in a natural cycle that is affected by the cycles in the ocean currents. Starting in 1960, the strip moved south, a movement that caused drought in the Sahel and drying out in Central Africa, South Asia and parts of South America. At the same time, the rains increased in Brazil and in the Great Lakes region of Africa.
The team of researchers modeled the reasons for the movement of the rain band in coordination with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and all the models showed that the cause of the drought in the Sahel is sulfur spray pollution in the Northern Hemisphere.
Frierson says that although it is difficult to predict rainfall and not all the models agree, "it is clear that in addition to greenhouse gases, air pollution affects the climate and not only in one place. "Emissions of pollutants in the USA and Europe affect the decrease of rainfall and even its stopping in Africa and caused a drought in the Sahel".
Cooling in the Northern Hemisphere pushed the rain band south. In 1990, following measures taken in the USA and Europe to reduce emissions, the emission of aerosols decreased and the rain band returned to the north.
After finding the main cause of the terrible drought and now that the rains (maybe) return, it is appropriate to turn attention to the proper management of grazing and agriculture. Proper land management in the third world may repair the damage caused by emissions from the western world. The emission of greenhouse gases does not stop and therefore the global warming continues. Since the northern hemisphere has more land, the temperature rise in the north is higher than in the south.
Those who will be hurt and will be hurt more by global warming are the inhabitants of the third world, and once again the "first world" (the western world) will be to blame.
This is the place to repeat the "motto": the time has come that instead of controlling the environment for the sake of the human population, there should be control of the human population for the sake of the environment.
One response
Caution: Preaching morals:
You have to move forward slowly. Maybe already in the next decade we will be able to settle Mars, but somewhere else on Earth there will still be drought and famine (ie: even the basic thing for sustaining life does not exist).
If a thread is likened to nature then it would be possible to say (at least I say) as long as the thread is melted - it creates extreme conditions on both sides until finally it tears and only one part is longer than another part. And as long as we need a whole thread to hold and not unravel we can't afford to keep playing with it.
But life is not fair. 🙂 And if in nature the dinosaurs became extinct then the humans (if they do not act to improve the situation) will also become extinct.
Not all humans. Some of them. Which part? That's an interesting question.