Climate change made this summer's dry spell more likely in Europe, the United States and China.
Major rivers were dried up, crops were destroyed, and water restrictions were put in place. It struck places already plagued by drying in the U.S., like the West, but also places like the Northeast that are more prone to dry spells. China has just had its driest summer in 60 years.
If it weren't for human-caused climate change, this type of dry spell would only happen once every 400 years across the Northern Hemisphere. They expect the same conditions every 20 years because of how warm the climate has been.
Climate scientist at Columbia University and study co-author, Maarten van Aalst, said that the "fingerprints of climate change" are the ecological disasters of the recent past.
"The impacts are very clear to people and are hitting hard, not just in poor countries, like the flooding Pakistan, but also in some of the richest parts of the world," he said.
Scientists analyzed weather data, computer simulations and soil data to figure out how climate change affects drying in the Northern Hemisphere. Climate change made it more likely that there would be dry soil.
The authors of the study accounted for the fact that the climate will get warmer, even though the climate has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius.
It will happen once every 10 years in western Central Europe and every year in the Northern Hemisphere with an additional 0.8 degrees C degrees warming.
Van Aalst said that they are seeing cascading effect across sectors and regions. Reducing emissions is one way to do that.
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