Ineffective Resolution: Middle East and Climate Change

Ineffective Resolution: Middle East and Climate Change

Despite a couple of years of trying to narrow the range of my, say, professional activities, my poor blogging performance in the last few weeks suggests that there is work to be done. In class, we are looking at the Paris Agreement and the role of climate science in its implementation. Though not pretty, I have collected together some of the analyses of the Paris Agreement on my Tumblr site. I am also serving as an “independent expert” for the Copernicus Climate Change Service. It’s easy to get me to do things if you call me an expert. And I spend more and more time thinking about NOAA’s Next Generation Global Forecast System. All of these things are pretty interesting, but I am not so sure they make the compelling blog.

There is no shortage of climate news, like February’s sort of shocking warmth, but I don’t have much to add to that. And I am just waiting for the right moment to revisit the 2016 El Niño. “How nature points up the folly of men” – go go go Godzilla. I hear the sea cruise went well.

What's left for me? I participated in a symposium called Climate Change and Crisis in the Middle East. (also here). Some might remember that in my analyses of the 2010 Russian heat wave and the Pakistani flood, I referenced the possible role of weather and climate in the Arab Spring. This seems to have been a time when market forces and wheat export policy amplified an extreme weather-climate event. (Just noticed that by coincidence, Jeff Masters on Drought and Collapse of Civilizations.)

I was interested, therefore, in learning from some experts in the field. The conference featured political scientists Jeannie Sowers and Hannu Juusola. Both of these experts study the role of water in Middle East politics and crises. There was a panel of Rosina Bierbaum, Sam White, and me. Perrin Selcer moderated the event.

There were several items brought forth by Drs. Sower and Juusola. There is no doubt that there has been extensive drought in the Middle East, and it has been especially intense in Syria. The drought has been going on for nearly a decade, so it, in fact, precedes much of the current conflict. Though no one claimed that drought is the “cause” of the current Syrian conflict and refuge crisis, the drought has definitely increased the stress on local agriculture and all things associated with water. What was especially interesting was the fact that the population of the Middle East and Northern Africa has far exceeded that that can be supported with local water. Therefore, water is essentially imported as food. Such importation requires cash to support the purchase, and much of that cash is related to oil production and oil export. Therefore, the calculation of climate change, fossil fuel use reduction, water scarcity, economic success, and nation stability does not suggest an easy future.

The other issue that was especially interesting was the concept of infrastructure warfare. That is, given the scarcity and distribution of water, there is an emphasis on large, centralized water infrastructure – dams and aqueducts. This gives these projects special strategic interest between conflicting parties. There was also a fascinating comment in the discussion that all of this infrastructure, as well as most of the proposed adaptation plans, are, technologically, essentially Roman.

OK, what was my role at this conference? I was the physical climate scientist. Since the main thing I do these days is to collect together resources to support my lurching interests, here are my resources on Middle East Water.

Figure 1 shows the observations used in Hoerling et al. 2012



Fig. 1. (top) Observed time series of Mediterranean (30°–45°N; 10°W–40°E) cold season (November–April) precipitation for the period 1902–2010 and (bottom) the observed change in cold season precipitation for the period 1971–2010 minus 1902–70. Anomalies, differences in millimeters (mm), are relative to the 1902–2010 period. Solid curve is the smoothed precipitation time series. Data are from the Global Precipitation Climatology Center (GPCC).

Even by the time in figure, 2010, this drought was historic. Hoerling et al. write in their abstract, “A change in wintertime Mediterranean precipitation toward drier conditions has likely occurred over 1902–2010 whose magnitude cannot be reconciled with internal variability alone. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol forcing are key attributable factors for this increased drying, though the external signal explains only half of the drying magnitude.”

The drought has continued since the Hoerling et al. 2012 paper, and in a 2016 paper, Cook et al. state it is the most serious drought in their 900-year reliable record. Again from the abstract, “These results confirm the exceptional nature of this drought relative to natural variability in recent centuries, consistent with studies that have found evidence for anthropogenically forced drying in the region.” (See also Human Induced Climate Change in 2014 Drought.)

So what did I say? Presently drought is a threat multiplier, and if some characteristics of drought are attributable to human-caused climate change, then some percentage of the crisis is attributable to human-caused climate change. Climate change is not the “cause,” but it is not making things better. The Middle East and Northern Africa are regions where drying and extended droughts are most likely to intensify. The large-scale patterns of dry and wet are associated with the basic parameters of the Earth: rotation, land-sea temperature contrasts, and mountains. Therefore, on a planet warming from greenhouse gases, heating in the equatorial region will intensify the circulation and alter the weather patterns that cause the deserts in Middle East and Northern Africa. Therefore, what we are seeing today, long drought over a large region, is consistent with both theory and model projections. This is, likely, a robust signal of a changing climate, one of the most robust we have. From the point of view of climate change and its effects on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, policy and political agreements – what has been done in the past to live with the weather and climate, will not work in the future.

The Middle East and Northern Africa are places where stability, political and economic, is difficult at best. There is nothing about climate change that is going to make the situation any easier. Ordered adaptation lies in technology and regional-scale, integrated policy. Such coordination would seem out of reach. Perhaps with as much certainty and even sooner than sea-level rise, this region will face climate-change challenges comparable to the other destabilizing factors that are present. It is not a pretty picture.

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