New study shows the ‘fingerprints’ of climate change on 20th century drying

Laura Paskus
 
Most New Mexicans understand that climate change is already happening and that its impacts will continue into the future. Now, a new study published in Nature reveals signs of human-caused climate change in the past, too. Relying upon computer models and long-term global observations, the peer-reviewed study shows the “fingerprint” of drought due to warming from greenhouse gas emissions in the early twentieth century. The researchers identified three distinct periods within their climate models: 1981 to present, 1950 to 1975 and 1900 to 1949. In that initial time period, during the first half of the twentieth century, “a signal of greenhouse gas-forced change is robustly detectable,” they write. Both various observational datasets and tree-ring based constructions of drought over the past millennia “confirm that human activities were likely affecting worldwide drought risk as early as the beginning of the last century.”...MORE