A new NASA study confirms another likely effect of global warming: The terrible drought in the eastern Mediterranean since 1998 is by far the worst in the last millennium. The area affected by this lack of rainfall of biblical proportions includes the territories of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey , but its consequences, experts say, extend to the rest of the Mediterranean basin.
Although dry and wet periods occur naturally over time and there are large oscillations, the anomaly detected since the end of the 20th century could be attributed to the effects of human action on the climate . To reach these conclusions, NASA experts have thoroughly studied the Old World Drought Atlas , a suggestive name given to the records of tree rings, living and dead, in the Mediterranean area.
As is well known, the thickness of these concentric circles indicates the amount of precipitation each year. Thus they have been able to determine that the drought from 1998 to 2012 – the last year studied – in the eastern Mediterranean has been 50% more intense than any that occurred in the last 500 years , and between 10% and 20% drier than the worst recorded since the 12th century.
Another interesting finding from NASA is that in the northern part of the Mediterranean basin (that is, Greece, Italy and the Spanish and French coasts) it tends to rain less when more precipitation falls in the eastern part of North Africa , and vice versa. . With these indications, the researchers are trying to design computational models that allow us to anticipate climate changes in the medium and long term and calibrate the true effects of global warming.
