A three-year drought that has left millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran with little water wouldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change, a new study found. The team looked at temperatures, rainfall and moisture levels and compared what happened in the last three years to multiple computer simulations of the conditions in a world without human-caused climate change. “With every degree of warming Syria, Iraq and Iran will become even harder places to live.”Computer simulations didn’t find significant climate change fingerprints in the reduced rainfall, which was low but not too rare, Otto said. But evaporation of water in lakes, rivers, wetlands and soil “was much higher than it would have been’’ without climate change-spiked temperatures, she said. In addition to making near-normal water conditions into an extreme drought, study authors calculated that the drought conditions in Syria and Iraq are 25 times more likely because of climate change, and in Iran, 16 times more likely.

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Persons: ”, Friederike Otto, It’s, Mohammed Rahimi, Otto, Kelly Smith, Rana El Hajj, ” Otto, Seth Borenstein Organizations: Imperial College of London, Semnan University, U.S ., Mitigation, Climate, Twitter, AP Locations: Syria, Iraq, Iran, West Asia, Nebraska, Climate Centre, Lebanon