Global warming is increasing the chances of worldwide harvest failure on the scale of the tragic 19th century drought and famine that claimed 50 million lives.

Awaiting aid in drought-ravaged Somalia in 2011. Image: Stuart Price/UN Multimedia

"LONDON − Climate change driven by human-induced global warming could recreate the conditions for a re-run of one of the most tragic episodes in human history, the Great Drought and Global Famine of 1875 to 1878.

Those years were marked by widespread and prolonged droughts in Asia, Brazil and Africa, triggered by a coincidence of unusual conditions in the Pacific, Indian, and North Atlantic Oceans.

The famine – made more lethal by the political constraints linked to 19th-century colonial domination of three continents – is now thought to have claimed up to 50 million lives.

And the message contained in new research published in the Journal of Climate is stark: what happened before could happen again."

Read the Climate Change blog article

#foodshortages  #famine  #global heating  #climate action  #asia  #brazil  #africa  

See also  New Report Warns Geoengineering the Climate Is a '...