Saturday, November 10, 2018

A freak 1870s climate event killed millions – and could happen again

A depiction of the impact of fame that hit India in the 1870s


  We know about these huge events that also include the huge floods in China and the cattle die out in Africa because the British Empire had boots on the ground to observe them, if not the ability to do much.  Today we are potentially able to deal with these disasters to the extent of preventing a lot of collateral death.
 
Today it should be possible to supply rations at least able to sustain.  Stockpiles and shipping all exist and can be fully in play in weeks.
 
This is a reminder though that all communities do have real vulnerabilities and we are still decades away from creating Refugio underground to all natural communities sufficient to protect and sustain the whole population..
 
A freak 1870s climate event killed millions – and could happen again

A depiction of the impact of famine that hit India in the 1870s

31 October 2018


© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

By Michael Marshall

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032023-800-a-freak-1870s-climate-event-killed-millions-and-could-happen-again/?utm_medium=NLC


IT IS the forgotten famine. A global drought in the 1870s led to starvation in South America, Asia and Africa, but the event doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

At last we are shedding light on its causes. The drought was triggered by a combination of climate events never seen before. While rare, this was entirely natural, so could happen again.

Between 1875 and 1878, severe drought ravaged India, China and parts of Africa and South America. The result was a famine that struck three continents.


“It is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in human history,” says Deepti Singh at Washington State University.

The resulting famine was described by Mike Davis at the University of California, Riverside in his 2001 book Late Victorian Holocausts. He estimated that 50 million people died.

Now Singh and her colleagues, including Davis, have examined the drought in detail. The first step was getting weather data from a time before records were kept. Fortunately, in 19th century India a network of rain gauges was set up. For other places, like China, the researchers estimated rainfall from tree rings.


“If we had a drought like this today, there would be devastating effects on hunger and on poverty”

Singh says the results suggested the events of the 1870s were unusually severe. By looking at estimates of rainfall based on tree rings and other proxies, the team estimated that the drought at this time was the most severe in Asia for 800 years.

The researchers identified several factors that may have helped trigger the catastrophe. The most obvious was a big El Niño from 1877 to 1878. During an El Niño, warm water spreads over the Pacific, releasing heat into the air. This affects weather across the world, bringing storms to some places and drought to others.

But that’s not all. In 1877, a second climate cycle, the Indian Ocean Dipole, was active, which meant the western Indian Ocean was warmer than the east. This typically weakens India’s rain- generating monsoon. “It was the strongest Indian Ocean Dipole on record,” says Singh. Finally, there is evidence of unusual warmth in the Atlantic from 1877 to 1879.

To check which of these events may have played a role in the drought, the team ran a climate model in two ways. One used global sea surface temperatures. The other used just Pacific temperatures, simulating the El Niño alone. They found they could only explain the drought using the global sea temperatures (Journal of Climate, doi.org/cwb7).

The study has impressed climatologist Isla Simpson of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. “It’s pretty unusual to be able to go into this much detail on an event that far back,” she says.

This pattern of climate events was natural, beyond our control, and so could be repeated. The good news is the world is more resilient to droughts today, thanks to better crops and extensive trade, says Olivier Rubin at Roskilde University, Denmark.

“If we had a drought like this today, there would be devastating effects on hunger, devastating effects on poverty,” he says. But while people would go hungry, it should be possible to avoid such a deadly famine.

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