OMNI
UNCCD UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION TO COMBAT
DESERTIFICATION ANTICIPATING UNWDCD WORLD DAY TO
COMBAT DESERTIFICATION JUNE 17, #3.
April 19, 2020
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace,
Justice, and ECOLOGY.
(#1, June 17, 2012; #2, Sept. 13, 2015)
UNWDCD
WORLD DAY TO COMBAT DESERTIFICATION. 17 June, World
Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, is observed each year
to promote public awareness of international efforts to combat drought
and desertification and their disastrous consequences. The importance of this UN agency grows each day with its
international New Deal campaign to stop rising temperature, drought, depletion
of water, soil erosion, and related and increasing problems. See Green New Deal, which encompasses world drought and whose global scope
synchronizes with the UN. --Dick
See OMNI’s
Temperature newsletters
OMNI TEMPERATURE, HEAT, CLIMATE
CATASTROPHE #2
OMNI’s Climate Refugee newsletter #1 is in preparation. [Will one of you interested in refugees take
on the compiling of it and henceforth? I
have fallen behind.]
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“The parched West is heading into a global
warming-fueled megadrought that could last for centuries.” Originally published: Inside Climate News by Bob Berwyn (April 16, 2020).
Also published in the April 17
issue of the journal Science. Posted Apr 18, 2020 by Eds. of
mronline.org.
The American West is well
on its way into one of the worst megadroughts on record, a new study warns,
a dry period that could last for centuries and spread from Oregon and Montana,
through the Four Corners and into West Texas and northern Mexico.
Several other
megadroughts, generally defined as dry periods that last 20 years or more, have
been documented in the West going back to about 800 A.D. In the study, the
researchers, using an extensive tree-ring history, compared recent climate data
with conditions during the historic megadroughts. [OMNI’s Climate Book Forum is fortunate to have as a member
of the committee, Malcolm Cleveland, tree-ring scientist. –D]
They found that in this century, global warming is tipping the
climate scale toward an unwelcome rerun, with dry conditions persisting far
longer than at any other time since Europeans colonized and developed the
region. The study was published online Thursday and appears in the April 17
issue of the journal Science.
Human-caused
[Anthropocene] global warming is responsible for about half the severity of the
emerging megadrought in western North America, said Jason Smerdon, a Columbia
University climate researcher and a co-author of the new research.
“What
we’ve identified as the culprit is the increased drying from the warming. The
reality is that the drying from global warming is going to continue,” he said.
We’re on a trajectory in keeping with the worst megadroughts of
the past millennia.
The
ancient droughts in the West were caused by natural climate cycles that shifted
the path of snow and rainstorms. But human-caused global warming is responsible
for about 47 percent of the severity of the 21st century drought by sucking
moisture out of the soil and plants, the study found.
The
regional drought caused by global warming is plain to see throughout the West
in the United States. River flows are dwindling, reservoirs holding years worth
of water supplies for cities and farms have emptied faster than a bathtub
through an open drain, bugs and fires have destroyed millions of acres of
forests, and dangerous dust storms are on the rise.
A similar
scenario is unfolding in South America, especially in central Chile, a region
with a climate similar to that in western North America. Parts of the Andes
Mountains and foothills down to the coast have been parched by an unprecedented
10-year dry spell that has cut some river flows by up to 80 percent.
In both
areas, research shows, global warming could make the droughts worse than any in
at least several thousand years, drying up the ground and shifting regional
weather patterns toward drier conditions. This is bad news for modern
civilizations that have developed in the last 500 years, during which they
enjoyed an unusually stable and wet climate. And assumptions about water
availability based on that era are not realistic, said climate scientist Edward
Cook, another co-author on the study who is also with the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory.
The impacts of a
long-lasting drought in the West could also affect adjacent regions. A
2019 study showed
that dry conditions in upwind areas may be intensifying agricultural droughts.
With west winds prevailing across North America, hot and dry conditions in the
Southwest could reduce the amount of atmospheric moisture available to produce
rainfall farther east, in Oklahoma and Texas, for example. The study found that
such drought linkages accounted for 62 percent of the precipitation deficit
during the 2012 Midwest drought.
MORE https://mronline.org/2020/04/18/the-parched-west-is-heading-into-a-global-warming-fueled-megadrought-that-could-last-for-centuries/
[concluding
text] The only real long-term solution is to halt greenhouse gas pollution….
It’s like with the coronavirus pandemic, we have to flatten the
curve of global warming. We do that by removing the emissions.
[OMNI can be proud as the
2006 origin of the CCTF or Climate Change Task Force. Some years later it aligned
with the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which is laser focused on revenue neutral
carbon fee and dividend. Our local
chapter added chapters, and in July of 2017 the Arkansas Citizens’ Climate
League was incorporated as a 501 (c) 3 organization local
chapter of CCL: CCL now has a bill before
the House, HR. 763. Thanks to Robert
McAfee for details.]
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[On 5-27-19
the NADG published a map from the USDA
showing the counties designated as primary victims of the disastrous recent
floods and the counties designated as contiguous disaster counties. A similar map showing the primary and secondary
states to be affected by the drought would be useful. Agriculture and drinking water of Western
Arkansas, we can suppose, will be affected, and refugees are
predictable. –D]
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UNCCD News Alert 4 July
2018
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4:03 AM (15 hours ago)
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Sent to OMNI Climate Book Forum Committee 6-13-18
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4:24 AM (9 hours ago)
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SenSen
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Sent to Charles and Robert M
of CCL, and to Jeanne and Lolly
UNCCD
Alert No. 12/08/2016
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OMNI
UN AGAINST DESERTIFICATION
AND DROUGHT #2, Sept. 13, 2015.
#1, June 17, 2012.
END UNCCD #3
April 19, 2020 (anticipating June 17)
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