Under severe drought for decades, Brazil’s Cerrado is experiencing an ongoing water crisis. Its aquifers are losing water faster than they can replenish, rivers are running thin and those living and farming in the drainage area of the once-mighty São Francisco River are beginning to doubt whether they can still rely on the dwindling supply for water and hydroelectric power. A new study has provided one answer to the long-debated cause of the drought. After analyzing 700 years’ worth of climate data collected in a cave in Minas Gerais, a group of researchers has found that the current drought, the most severe event of its kind in at least the past seven centuries, would have been impossible without human-caused atmospheric warming. The study, published in Nature Communications, is part of a bigger research effort to understand climate variability and change in central-eastern South America. Home to 5% of the planet’s plant and animal species, the Cerrado is the world’s most biodiverse savanna and an essential source of water, with nine in 10 Brazilians using electricity originating from water sourced by the biome. Researchers collected data from Onça Cave, an open-mouth cavern in Peruaçu Caves National Park, in northern Minas Gerais state. Peruaçu Caves National Park. Image courtesy of Nicolás Misailidis Stríkis. Minas Gerais is just south of the Matopiba region, which includes the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí and Bahia, and is Brazil’s most recent and important agricultural frontier. “In this region, notably the western Bahia, which borders the northern…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Cerrado’s current drought impossible without human-caused climate change: Study first appeared on EnviroLink Network.