A drought that pushed millions of people into hunger across southern Africa has been driven mostly by the El Nino weather pattern -- not climate change, scientists said yesterday.
Johannesburg — Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have declared a national disaster over the severe dry spell that started in January and has devastated the agricultural sector, decimating crops and pastures.
"Over the past year, attribution studies have shown that many extreme weather events have been driven by a combination of both climate change and El Nino," said Joyce Kimutai of Imperial College London."The southern Africa drought appears to be a rarer example of an event fuelled primarily by El Nino."
But effective precipitation has remained the same, likely because higher temperatures lead to more water evaporation, they said. On the other hand, El Nino, a recurring natural weather phenomenon, brought fewer showers, increasing the likelihood of severe droughts, the data showed."Together, the results indicate that El Nino, rather than human-caused climate change, was the main driver of the southern African drought this year," the group said.
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