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New Orleans (pte049/24.05.2005/16:50) - Research has been done over the last five years to find a correlation between drought, warmer ocean temperatures and human-caused climate change. Dr James W. Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/ , Colorado, says that the substantial warming of the Indian Ocean can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
"In our models," Hurrell said, "the Indian Ocean shows very clear and dramatic warming into the future, which means more and more drought for southern Africa. It is consistent with what we would expect from an increase in greenhouse gases."
Hurrell's colleagues, researchers Dr. Martin P. Hoerling and Dr. Jon K. Eischeid of the Commerce Department's Climate Diagnostics Center, also in Boulder, found that the increasing warmth of the ocean changes the way the atmosphere circulates. This causes more air to rise above the water, which creates storms and rains in the immediate vicinity but generates the opposite motion of air over an adjacent continent, effectively taking the rain away from the other region.
Mid-21st century might see a 10 to 20 per cent drop in rain from February to April compared to the average of last century, Hurrell said.
Dr Kerry Cook, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell, said that greenhouse emissions need to be curbed in order to keep global warming down.
Hurrell's findings will be presented in New Orleans at a geophysics conference http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm05/ .
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