This article is a prime example of using THE PARTY LINE to get publicity and probably funding. The article and the study it is about has nothing really to do with man made global warming. Indeed it is more proof that the climate is driven by narural factors. The line that gets me is the first one " Reeling from consecutive lengthy droughts for 3,000 years"
Not to make light of something so devastating as this is to the inhabitants, but something lasting 3,000 years would seem to be something beyond a weather phenomena such as a drought, indeed I think that it might rightly be called the prevalent climate!
Indeed that this has become the natural condition for this portion of the world, to use it as some sort of case study for future conditions of global warming seems a bit absurd. It appears based on the article, the only climate change that would indeed be a change is if this area returned to a temperate fertile locale. Yet we are led to believe that after centuries of heat and drought, our automobiles in the past century have somehow contributed or compounded an existing multi-millennial condition. Buy this and I got some swamp land down here in Florida for you.
from AFP
Africa hit by mega-drought pattern:
study
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Reeling from consecutive lengthy droughts for 3,000 years, sub-Saharan Africa faces an inevitable repetition of mega-droughts, according to a study published Friday.
A team of US geoscientists and climate scientists found that severe doughts lasting several decades and sometimes even centuries have been the norm in west Africa for the past three centuries.
The most recent such drought lasted from 1400 to 1750, according to the researchers, whose study was published in the journal Science.
It was the first study to examine climate conditions in west Africa over thousands of years by analyzing annual layers of mud and tree sediment in Ghana's Lake Bosumtwi, a crater lake.
"Clearly, much of west Africa is already on the edge of sustainability," said University of Arizona geoscience professor Jonathan Overpeck, the study's lead author, "and the situation could become much more dire in the future with increased global warming."
The latest Sahel drought killed over 100,000 people and displaced scores more, according to a 2002 report by the United Nations Environment Program.
"What's disconcerting about this record is that it suggests that the most recent drought was relatively minor in the context of the west African drought history," said Timothy Shanahan of the University of Texas at Austin, who co-authored the study.
As global warming progresses due to emissions of mostly human-generated greenhouse gases, the temperature rise could make droughts more severe and prolonged, a potentially "devastating" development for Africa, Overpeck warned.
"They must plan for possible droughts that last much longer than a couple of decades," he told reporters by telephone. "We have strong confidence that continued warming will take place in the absence of reduction in greenhouse gases."
The periods of drought, especially those that lasted for 30-40 years, pointed to a pattern of sea surface temperature changes called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the researchers found.
According to this hypothesis, temperatures in the Atlantic naturally fluctuate over 60-year cycles.
Although the oscillation has not yet been confirmed over long time periods, computer simulations and data sets, such as tree-ring variations from sites around the West Atlantic, have hinted at the possibility.
"More and more, it's starting to look like the AMO is a big player affecting climate change around the Northern Hemisphere, including drought variability over western Africa and western North America," said Overpeck.
********
May I also point out that they are not even sure what causes these multi-century long droughts in the past as they do not understand yet the AMO which is a big player affecting climate change around the Northern Hemisphere, including drought variability yet they have figured out that CO2 is going to fry eggs on the roads of Norway in 2103. That swamp land is still available.
Indeed that this has become the natural condition for this portion of the world, to use it as some sort of case study for future conditions of global warming seems a bit absurd. It appears based on the article, the only climate change that would indeed be a change is if this area returned to a temperate fertile locale. Yet we are led to believe that after centuries of heat and drought, our automobiles in the past century have somehow contributed or compounded an existing multi-millennial condition. Buy this and I got some swamp land down here in Florida for you.
from AFP
Africa hit by mega-drought pattern:
studyWASHINGTON (AFP) — Reeling from consecutive lengthy droughts for 3,000 years, sub-Saharan Africa faces an inevitable repetition of mega-droughts, according to a study published Friday.
A team of US geoscientists and climate scientists found that severe doughts lasting several decades and sometimes even centuries have been the norm in west Africa for the past three centuries.
The most recent such drought lasted from 1400 to 1750, according to the researchers, whose study was published in the journal Science.
It was the first study to examine climate conditions in west Africa over thousands of years by analyzing annual layers of mud and tree sediment in Ghana's Lake Bosumtwi, a crater lake.
"Clearly, much of west Africa is already on the edge of sustainability," said University of Arizona geoscience professor Jonathan Overpeck, the study's lead author, "and the situation could become much more dire in the future with increased global warming."
The latest Sahel drought killed over 100,000 people and displaced scores more, according to a 2002 report by the United Nations Environment Program.
"What's disconcerting about this record is that it suggests that the most recent drought was relatively minor in the context of the west African drought history," said Timothy Shanahan of the University of Texas at Austin, who co-authored the study.
As global warming progresses due to emissions of mostly human-generated greenhouse gases, the temperature rise could make droughts more severe and prolonged, a potentially "devastating" development for Africa, Overpeck warned.
"They must plan for possible droughts that last much longer than a couple of decades," he told reporters by telephone. "We have strong confidence that continued warming will take place in the absence of reduction in greenhouse gases."
The periods of drought, especially those that lasted for 30-40 years, pointed to a pattern of sea surface temperature changes called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the researchers found.
According to this hypothesis, temperatures in the Atlantic naturally fluctuate over 60-year cycles.
Although the oscillation has not yet been confirmed over long time periods, computer simulations and data sets, such as tree-ring variations from sites around the West Atlantic, have hinted at the possibility.
"More and more, it's starting to look like the AMO is a big player affecting climate change around the Northern Hemisphere, including drought variability over western Africa and western North America," said Overpeck.
********
May I also point out that they are not even sure what causes these multi-century long droughts in the past as they do not understand yet the AMO which is a big player affecting climate change around the Northern Hemisphere, including drought variability yet they have figured out that CO2 is going to fry eggs on the roads of Norway in 2103. That swamp land is still available.
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