NEW YORK: A recent report by NASA states that greenhouse gases and atmospheric particles generated due to human activities were affecting global drought risk from the early 20thcentury.
Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City compared the predicted model with real-world soil moisture data to try to identify the correlations between human fingerprints, a term used in the study to describe greenhouse gas emissions, and global drought patterns in the 20th century.
Benjamin Cook, a lead author of the study,a climate scientist at GISS and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory saidthat, after analyzing the historical rain, temperature, soil moisture records, as well as tree ring patterns,they were pretty surprised that they can see this human fingerprint, this human climate change signal, emerge in the first half of the 20th century.
“Climate change is not just a future problem,” said Cook. “This shows it’s already affecting global patterns of drought, hydroclimate, trends, variability, it’s happening now. And we expect these trends to continue, as long as we keep warming the world,” he added.
The researchers claimed that this study is the first to provide historical evidence connecting human-generated emissions and drought at near-global scales.
While historical drought data aligned with the study’s predicted model in the first half of the 20th century, researchers also noticed a cooler and wetter period between 1950 and 1975.
Before the air quality laws were passed, industry expelled vast quantities of smoke, soot, sulfur dioxide and other particles that researchers believe blocked sunlight and counteracted greenhouse gases’ warming effects.
According to the researchers, after 1975, as pollution declined, global drought patterns began to trend back towards their prediction.