{"id":40208,"date":"2013-06-08T16:37:30","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T15:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/north-american-pollution-spurs-african-drought-study\/40208\/"},"modified":"2013-06-08T16:37:30","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T15:37:30","slug":"north-american-pollution-spurs-african-drought-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/north-american-pollution-spurs-african-drought-study\/","title":{"rendered":"North American Pollution Spurs African Drought: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A man tries to run from a sandstorm in the Western Saharan city of Dakhla (Photo: Evgeni Zotov\/ Flickr)<\/span><\/span>Decades of drought in central Africa may have had a surprising cause, according to new research that challenges the notion that the severe dry weather was triggered mainly by bad agricultural practices and overgrazing.<\/p>\n

The research, done at the University of Washington, shows that the drought was at least partially caused by pollution in the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n

The researchers said that sulfate-laden aerosols coming from coal-burning factories from the 1960s through the 1980s actually slowed warming in the Northern Hemisphere compared to the Southern Hemisphere. This shifted tropical rain bands south, away from the Sahel region, and led ultimately to the near drying up of Lake Chad, which is used to water crops in surrounding areas.<\/p>\n

Africa’s Sahel regionAfrica’s Sahel region \u201cWe think people should know that these particles not only pollute air locally, but they also have these remote climate effects,\u201d said the study\u2019s lead author, Yen-Ting Hwang, a University of Washington doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.<\/p>\n

Hwang\u2019s co-author, Dargan Frierson, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington, said \u201cto some extent, science messed this one up the first time around.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople thought that a large part of that drought was due to bad farming practices and desertification,\u201d he said. \u201cBut over the last 20 years or so we\u2019ve realized that that was quite wrong, and that large-scale ocean and atmosphere patterns are significantly more powerful in terms of shaping where the rains fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers also studied rainfall in other places on the northern edge of the tropical rain band such as northern India and South America. These areas also experienced less rainfall during the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, areas on the southern edge of the tropical rain band, such as northeast Brazil and the African Great Lakes, saw an increase in rainfall.<\/p>\n

The researchers also looked at 26 climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and found that nearly all the models showed some southward shift in rainfall and that slowed warming in the Northern Hemisphere was the \u201cprimary cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our research strategies is to zoom out,\u201d said Hwang. \u201cInstead of studying rainfall at a particular place, we try to look for the larger-scale patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a silver lining found in the research.<\/p>\n

The study showed that steps taken in the United States and Europe in the 1960s and 1970s to reduce emissions and improve air quality began to improve the situation in the Sahel. While the area still suffers short-term droughts, \u201cthe long-term drought began to recover in the 1980s\u201d as the rains began to move north again, according to the research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were able to do something that was good for us, and it also benefited people elsewhere,\u201d Frierson said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a trend that Hwang says is likely to continue.<\/p>\n

As the atmosphere gathers higher levels of greenhouse gases, however, Hwang said the Northern Hemisphere will warm more rapidly than the Southern Hemisphere because there is more land.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not yet crystal clear what will happen,\u201d she said. \u201cThere will be some shift in the tropical rains, and most models predict a northern shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2013 Voice of America<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man tries to run from a sandstorm in the Western Saharan city of Dakhla (Photo: Evgeni Zotov\/ Flickr)Decades of drought in central Africa may have had a surprising cause, according to new research that challenges the notion that the severe dry weather was triggered mainly by bad agricultural practices and overgrazing. The research, done […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-40208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}