Droughts in Syria in the 20th and 21st centuries

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Winter drought in the Mediterranean area 1971–2010 compared to 1902–2010: Syria – Jordan area in red on the right.
Winter precipitation in the Mediterranean region 1902–2010.

Recurring droughts in Syria are part of the local climate. However, increasing aridity has been observed in the region since the 1970s. From 2006 to 2011 in particular, Syria suffered an exceptional drought that affected around 60 percent of the country. Relationships with global warming and poor water management are now being discussed intensively in research. It is feared that incorrect handling of the scarce water could, among other things, lead to violent conflicts.

causes

In the years 1961–2009, Syria experienced drought for almost half of the years. From 2007 to 2010 there was an extreme drought of several years in Syria.

Anthropogenic global warming is seen as a major cause of the climatic changes . Since the 1970s, there has been an overall change towards more drought in the Mediterranean area , especially in the otherwise rainy winter. Since 1902, ten of the 12 winters with the lowest rainfall occurred in the Mediterranean region between 1990 and 2010. That global warming was partly responsible for the drought and will have an even greater impact on the socio-political and economic situation in the future is also supported by other studies. as a study published in 2016 revealed. Accordingly, the period 1998–2012 was with a probability bordering on certainty (98%) the driest 15-year period in the Levant for 500 years, with 89% certainty even in the past 900 years. Between 1969 and 2008, the maximum number of dry days in the rainy season increased by up to 32.4 days (Hasaka region) and the number of consecutive dry days by up to 34.4 (Raqqa region). In the 2007/2008 season, the amount of precipitation fell to 66 percent of the long-term average.

In addition to the climatic conditions, another reason for the drought is the increasing demand for water . This is made up of the population and per capita consumption. In Syria, the population has increased sharply since the middle of the 20th century: from 3.3 million people in 1950 to around 21.4 million in 2013. A pronounced pro-natalist policy since the 1950s, accompanying the official ban on the sale and use of contraceptives .

Water losses in the Euphrates-Tigris basin between 2002 and 2009 (source: GRACE )

Measurements from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) showed that water resources in the Tigris-Euphrates basin (Turkey, Syria, Iraq and western Iran) declined more sharply between 2003 and 2009 than in any other region in the world, with the exception of northern India. Decreasing rainfall and poor water management are seen as the causes . The widespread introduction of diesel engine pumps in the 1960s led to a sharp drop in the water table . Hundreds of new wells were drilled between 1970 and 1999 and the artificially irrigated areas increased sharply. Between 1999 and 2010 the number of wells rose from 135,089 to over 229,881; in 2010 57 percent of the wells were without a license. The sharp increase in groundwater use led to a drop in the groundwater level of up to 100 meters in the most severely affected areas between 1950 and 2000. Between 1993 and 2000, the water table in the Damascus region fell by six meters a year. In addition, the inflow of water from Turkey to Syria has decreased by 40 percent since 1975 due to the construction of dams and hydropower plants ( Southeast Anatolia project ).

consequences

Almost dried up riverbed of the Chabur in northeast Syria (October 2009)

The multi-year droughts in particular had serious consequences.

Droughts until 2001

There were more severe droughts in the area in the 1950s. A drought in 1961 reduced the camel population by 80 percent and the sheep by 50 percent. Abnormal drought prevailed again in the 1980s.

In the drought between 1998 and 2001, which hit all of Central Asia , 329,000 people (47,000 nomad households) had to kill their livestock, suffered from food shortages and needed emergency food supplies.

Drought 2006 to 2011

Vegetation anomaly in the “fertile crescent” 2006–2010

The provinces of Deir ez-Zor , Hasakah and Raqqa , which were considered the “breadbasket of the nation”, were hardest hit by the 2006–2011 drought . Among other things, there was a sharp decline in grain production between 2006 and 2008. The 2007/2008 wheat harvest was only 2.1 million tons - compared to the long-term average of 4.7 million (of which 3.8 million were consumed in Syria) - so that Syria had to import wheat for the first time in 15 years. In the 2008/2009 season, the affected provinces were again affected by reduced amounts of precipitation and in the 2009/2010 season by a harmful fungus ( yellow rust ), which spread rapidly due to the previous drought. The 2009/2010 wheat harvest of 3.2 million tons was therefore still below average despite higher rainfall this season. In 2008 and 2009 various subsidies relevant to agriculture were cut (diesel, fertilizer), which led to sharply rising prices.

The whole of the Near and Middle East was affected, with crop failures also in Israel (see the water level of the Dead Sea there ), Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran. The USDA estimated that the Middle East imported a total of 5.8 million tons of wheat in 2009-10, a 72% increase over the previous year.

This, combined with the drought, led to farmer migration to the cities, with whole family migration being a relatively new phenomenon. The UN estimated that 300,000 people emigrated from northeast Syria and 60–70 percent of the villages in Hassakeh and Deir provinces were abandoned, with the actual numbers likely being higher. According to the Washington Post , 1.5 million people were relocated within Syria due to the drought. About 75 percent of farmers would have lost all of their harvest, and farmers in northeast Syria about 85 percent of their livestock. According to the UN, around 1.3 million people were affected by the drought between 2008 and 2011, 800,000 of them so severely that they lost their livelihoods. Data from the hardest hit areas indicated a dramatic increase in (mal) diet-related diseases between 2006 and 2010. Among other things, 42 percent of children aged 6–12 months in Raqqa Province had anemia . While two million people lived in extreme poverty in 2003/4, in 2010 the UN estimated the number of people with unsafe food supplies at 3.7 million (17 percent of the Syrian population).

The drought period from 2006 to 2011 is seen by many as one of the causes of the civil war in Syria and the ensuing IS conflict .

According to Christiane Fröhlich , peace researcher at the University of Hamburg, her conversations with local people tended to contradict the climate thesis. After that, few of those who fled the drought became insurgents. Rather, the civil war was provoked by rather wealthy residents. Syria expert Francesca De Châtel pointed to inadequate water management and warned against stressing climate change as a cause, because it could distract politicians from their own mistakes and look for culprits outside the country.

Drought and heat 2013–2015

The winter of 2013 was again exceptionally dry. The spring of 2014 brought another drought with enormous crop failures, especially in the western Aleppo region. The summer of 2015, which also brought the heat wave in Pakistan and the heat of the century in Europe , was then also one of the hottest in recent decades in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Further development

The Mediterranean and the Middle East are considered to be one of the regions of the world that are likely to react most strongly to climate change, in particular due to a sharp decrease in rainfall and an increase in the variability of rainfall during the dry and warm seasons. The future climatic development in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East was examined by Johannes Lelieveld's working group . Based on climate models , an increase in average daily temperatures of 3.5 to 7 ° C was predicted by the end of the 21st century, as well as a decrease in precipitation of 10 percent compared to the period 1961–1990. If the population continues to rise and rainfall falls, countries such as Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan would have to cover around half of their water needs through seawater desalination and water imports by the middle of the 21st century . It was expected that - assuming regular population growth - the population in Syria will rise to 37 million by 2050. The International Research Institute for Agricultural and Food Policy predicted that harvests in Syria will decline by up to 60% by 2050.

media

  • The possible connection between the 2006–2010 drought in Syria and the civil war that followed was discussed in the first part of the Years of Living Dangerously documentary series .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Martin Hoerling, Jon Eischeid, Judith Perlwitz, Xiaowei Quan, Tao Zhang, Philip Pegion: On the Increased Frequency of Mediterranean Drought . In: Journal of Climate . tape 25 , no. 6 , October 27, 2011, p. 2146-2161 , doi : 10.1175 / JCLI-D-11-00296.1 . Pre-publication article: NOAA study: Human-caused climate change a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts. . NOAA News , October 27, 2011. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  2. ^ World Economic Forum : Global Risks 2014. Ninth Edition. Insight Report. ISBN 978-92-95044-60-9 . Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  3. ^ A b Alexander De Juan, Sarah Schwan: Rising temperatures in weak states: Climate change and violence in the Middle East. In: GIGA Focus , German Institute of Global and Area Studies , Institute for Middle East Studies. 1/2014 ( mercury.ethz.ch ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. PDF) , accessed December 30, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / mercury.ethz.ch
  4. ↑ a b Drought helped cause Syria's war. Will climate change bring more like it? In: The Washington Post , September 10, 2013. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
  5. ^ A b Benjamin I Cook et al .: Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the last 900 years . In: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres . 2016, p. JD023929 , doi : 10.1002 / 2015JD023929 .
  6. ↑ Colin P. Kelley et al .: Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 112 , no. 11 , 2015, p. 3241-3246 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1421533112 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Francesca De Châtel: The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution . In: Middle Eastern Studies . tape 50 , no. 4 , July 4, 2014, ISSN  0026-3206 , p. 521-535 , doi : 10.1080 / 00263206.2013.850076 .
  8. ↑ M. Skaf, p Mathbout: Drought changes over last five Decades in Syria . In: Options Méditerranéennes . tape 95 , 2010, p. 107-112 ( om.ciheam.org [PDF]).
  9. ^ John Anthony Allan, Tony Allan: The Middle East Water Question: Hydropolitics and the Global Economy . Tauris & Co Ltd, London, New York 2002, ISBN 1-86064-813-4 .
  10. ^ A b Joshua Hammer: Is a Lack of Water to Blame for the Conflict in Syria? From: Smithsonian.com , June 2013. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
  11. ↑ a b c d Daniel Lingenhöhl: How the Syrian civil war is related to climate change. On: Spektrum.de , March 2, 2015.
  12. ↑ Martin Woker: The revenge of the impoverished . ( Memento of April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 6, 2014. Accessed January 5, 2015.
  13. ↑ Ricardo M. Trigo, Célia M. Gouveia, David Barriopedro: The intense 2007–2009 drought in the Fertile Crescent: Impacts and associated atmospheric circulation . In: Agricultural and Forest Meteorology . tape 150 , no. 9 , August 15, 2010, p. 1245–1257 , doi : 10.1016 / j.agrformet.2010.05.006 .
  14. ↑ Middle East & Central Asia: Continued Drought in 2009/10 Threatens Greater Food Grain Shortages. And Middle East: Deficient Rainfall Threatens 2009/10 Wheat Production Prospects. USDA Commodity Intelligence Report , September 16 and December 15, 2008.
  15. ^ Robert F. Worth: Earth Is Parched Where Syrian Farms Thrived. In: The New York Times , October 13, 2010. Retrieved January 4, 2015.
  16. ↑ Deborah Amos Mideast Water Crisis Brings Misery, Uncertainty. npr.org, January 7, 2010
  17. ↑ Peter H. Gleick: Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria . In: Weather, Climate, and Society . tape 6 , no. 3 , March 3, 2014, ISSN  1948-8327 , p. 331-340 , doi : 10.1175 / WCAS-D-13-00059.1 .
  18. ^ Peter H. Gleick: The Syrian Conflict and the Role of Water . In: Peter H. Gleick (Ed.): The World's Water . The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources. 2014, ISBN 978-1-59726-421-1 , pp. 147-151 , doi : 10.5822 / 978-1-61091-483-3_8 .
  19. ^ Thomas L. Friedman : The Other Arab Spring. In: The New York Times. April 7, 2012. Accessed December 30, 2014.
  20. ↑ How Climate Change Helped Fuel Syria's Civil War. In publichealthwatch , March 4, 2015.
  21. ^ A b Lars Fischer: Syrian war triggered by severe drought. On: Spektrum.de , June 25, 2014. Retrieved January 4, 2014.
  22. ↑ Drought as a spark for the Syrian civil war? On Bild der Wissenschaft online, Earth and Space - Climate and Weather , March 3, 2015.
  23. ^ Phil Hearse: Resource wars and the Middle East. Transcript of a speech on January 16, 2010, on marxsite.com - on the overall geopolitical situation of the area.
  24. ↑ Spiegel-Online, Did climate change trigger the war in Syria? , Axel Bojanowski , March 7, 2015
  25. ↑ Francesca de Châtel: The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution . In: Middle Eastern Studies . 2014, doi : 10.1080 / 00263206.2013.850076 .
  26. ↑ Global Hazards - February 2013. NOAA-NCDC Climate Monitoring , March 20, 2013.
  27. ^ USDA World Agricultural Production. Section Syria Wheat: Severe drought along western winter grains significantly impacts production. On The Crop Site , May 9, 2014.
  28. ^ Heatwaves from India to the Middle East and Europe. Elena Ugrin on TheWatchers , thewatchers.adorraeli.com, June 7, 2015
  29. ^ F. Giorgi: Climate change hot spots . In: Geophysical Research Letters . tape 33 , no. 8 , April 1, 2006, p. L08707 , doi : 10.1029 / 2006GL025734 .
  30. ↑ a b J. Lelieveld , P. Hadjinicolaou, E. Kostopoulou, J. Chenoweth, M. El Maayar, C. Giannakopoulos, C. Hannides, MA Lange, M. Tanarhte, E. Tyrlis, E. Xoplaki: Climate change and impacts in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East . In: Climatic Change . tape 114 , no. 3-4 , March 7, 2012, pp. 667-687 , doi : 10.1007 / s10584-012-0418-4 .
  31. ↑ Jonathan Chenoweth, Panos Hadjinicolaou, Adriana Bruggeman, Jos Lelieveld, Zev Levin, Manfred A. Lange, Elena Xoplaki, Michalis Hadjikakou: Impact of climate change on the water resources of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East region: Modeled 21st century changes and implications . In: Water Resources Research . tape 47 , no. 6 , June 10, 2011, doi : 10.1029 / 2010WR010269 ( onlinelibrary.wiley.com ).