Climate scientists now believe that climate change is leading to more extreme and less predictable droughts, with catastrophic environmental, economic and social effects.
There is also now a growing body of evidence to suggest that relatively wet places, such as the tropics and higher latitudes, will get wetter, while relatively dry places in the subtropics (where most of the world’s deserts are located) will become drier. This is clearly seen in recent years, most notably in 2024, the warmest year on record. Several regions of the world displayed astonishing warm temperature anomalies. In July 2024, these anomalies exceeded 3 °C in north-western North America, eastern Canada, the Mediterranean, eastern Europe, south-eastern and central Africa, Iran, western and central Russia, Japan, and Antarctica. Higher temperatures means faster rates of moisture evaporation from soils which in turn leads to crop failure, in particular corn, soybeans and wheat. These are some of the key food staples which feed billions of people worldwide. When these are in short supply, the result is often social unrest, migration and famine.
During the period August 2023 – July 2024, a total of 52 individual prolonged meteorological drought events were detected, the major and longest-lasting ones being over South America, central and eastern Asia, central Africa, and North America.
The European Commission Joint Research Centre reported on the growing concerns over 2024's high temperatures:
Rivers, lakes, and water reservoirs have been drying up as a result of the combination of prolonged lack of rain and high evaporation caused by the high temperatures.
In South America, rivers such as the Amazon have been at alarmingly low water levels, threatening agriculture, drinking water supplies, transportation and hydropower production.
In southern Africa, the very low water flow of the Zambezi River — a critical source of hydroelectric power for several countries — has been causing power shortages and blackouts, with several indirect consequences.
Severe water shortages in Morocco, Spain, Italy, and South Africa are forcing governments to apply water-use restrictions. In the Nile Basin and in some parts of South America, disputes over water rights are already a pressing concern.
The most alarming section of their report centred on the impact of drought on food security:
Droughts, together with heatwaves and warm spells, affected crops productivity in several regions of Europe, southern Africa, Central and Southern America, and Southeast Asia.
Farmers in areas affected by prolonged droughts are facing reduced crop yields and crop failures, with potential impacts on income and local economies. These effects are particularly pronounced in areas without sustainable irrigation systems or direct access to fresh water.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gave a stark warning in their 2022 6th assessment report of what many people in the world face in the near future regarding scarcity of water supply:
IPCC AR6 WG1*
Figure 1
Failure of a maize crop owing to drought in Malawi, 2006
The extreme drought conditions have pushed millions of people from food stress to crisis levels in many regions of the world. With less food available, vulnerable populations will be further exposed to hunger and malnutrition. In southern Africa, millions of people are expected to require food aid not only in the coming months, but coming decades.
In some parts of the world, droughts are expected to increase in intensity with future warming. These areas are shown marked in brown in the IPCC map below:
"Currently, roughly half of the world’s 8 billion people are estimated to experience severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year due to climatic and non-climatic factors.
Drought is one of the most significant components of ongoing climate change impacts.
This implies that drought will directly impact the lives and livelihoods of people worldwide, making it a visible and tangible manifestation of climate change experienced by billions of individuals on a daily basis."
Life is hard when the only life-giving water is a few kilometres away in a dried up river bed. These Kenyan girls walk there and back a few times a day.
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Whilst all of these areas are cause for concern, the most worrying of all is the north-eastern part of South America. The entire Amazon rain forest lies in this region which currently absorbs between 5-10% of all human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. If you have read this website's section on deforestation, you will know that rainfall in the south-east region of the Brazilian Amazon is already falling as a result of widespread deforestation. Reduced rainfall spells catastrophe for the remaining forest since, as the name suggests, rain forest is utterly dependent on high levels of precipitation through the year. Drought will destroy the remaining forest and without this CO2 sink, CO2 levels will rise even faster causing global temperature to do the same. It's a tipping point that is beginning to tip.
Title photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@wolfalexs?