East Africa Drought: Climate Change Made Crisis 100 Times More Likely To Happen

East Africa's severe drought was made 100 times more likely due to climate change, scientists say.
The crisis, which is thought to be the worst in the last four decades, has pushed millions to be displaced and millions of others to be on the brink of famine.
Rising global temperature was found to have disrupted the region's weather pattern, delaying rainfall seasons by a record fifth time in a row.

The severe drought that people in East Africa are experiencing, which is considered to be the worst in the last four decades, is believed to have been made 100 times more likely to happen due to climate change.

The situation has resulted in more than a million people being displaced and millions of others being on the brink of famine. On Thursday, a network of extreme-weather scientists found that rising global temperatures caused disruption in the weather patterns that usually bring rainfall to Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.

Severe Drought in East Africa

The once-dependable rainy seasons failed last fall, marking the record fifth time that the unfortunate circumstances have developed. Furthermore, hotter conditions have caused more moisture to evaporate from the region's landscape, causing croplands to dry out and resulting in millions of livestock starving to death, as per the Washington Post.

Scientists say that global temperatures are now roughly 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average. They argued that this makes droughts several times more likely to happen than they would in a cooler environment.

Friederike Otto, a co-author of the study, said that the results they saw underscore the significant consequences of rising climate change in developing countries worldwide. She argued that these nations did so little to contribute to the problem and have far fewer resources to combat the issue.

She was hopeful that the study's conclusions would help galvanize financial support for the most vulnerable countries in the world as they continue to face irreversible climate effects. Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, added that the focus of the world should be on reducing vulnerability.

Consequences of Climate Change

The scientists also looked into whether or not climate change was the reason for the lack of rain in the region but said that their findings noted there was no overall impact. The team found that climate change makes low rainfall twice as likely to occur during the "long rain" seasons in the region, according to CNN.

Furthermore, they found that climate change had also made the "short rains," which occur between October and December, wetter. This trend was found to be absent in the Horn of Africa in the past few years and experts believe that it is because of the influence of La Nina, a climate phenomenon that causes dryer conditions.

The results of the study found that droughts in the region now have a chance of roughly 5% developing every year. This is a number that they expect would rise as the Earth continues to get warmer.

The principal meteorologist at the Kenya Meteorological Department, Joyce Kimutai, said that exceptional droughts would be seen due to the combined effect of low precipitation and rising temperatures, said the New York Times.