A team around the The Goddess Of Water, Sonia Seneviratne,
investigate whether acquired drought propensity can be reversed by removing CO2 (CDR) from the atmosphere, meaning, does the hydrological cycle change back once CO2 concentration drops?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-025-00487-8
They start the models with pre-industrial CO2, then increase slowly, then decrease as slowly.
Once pre-industrial levels are reached again, the models continue for 60 years. And all this time, they count frequency and strength of agricultural* drought.
60yrs after 280ppm is reached again, half of the Mediterranean still keeps the "acquired drought skill" despite drop in CO2 and °C.
All other affected regions almost fully recover and almost in sync with CDR.
Surprisingly no drought hotspots: all of Asia, all of Africa except its Southern and Northern ends, and Canada.
"We find that drought increases in hotspot regions cannot be symmetrically reversed" by carbon direct removal, CDR.
(hysteresis: a system state that depends on the history of the system rather than on momentary environmental factors)
"Drought hysteresis and irreversibility are most pronounced in the Mediterranean, northern Central America, west and east southern Africa and southern Australia. Our findings imply irreversible drought impacts associated with CDR, highlighting the need for planning long-term drought adaptations."
Strongly related to the #RCPcollapse research I want to see.
Not very useful that they went all the way back to pre-industrial CO2 concentration. But they also snapshot the regional behaviour on being synced to removal. So that's really useful.
Avoid the Mediterranean.
Adapt to drought and then to changing conditions in:
USA and Mexico, west and north of Argentina up to Mexico, Australia's South and East coast, and on the African continent, if you stay North of Madagascar and South of Sudan_Burkina Faso, you avoid drought hotspots altogether. Southern Africa loses the drought skill in sync with carbon removal.
#CDR #negativeEmissionen #CarbonDioxideRemoval #drought #climateChange
Klimareporter (Inoffiziell)
anlomedad
flunky
GermanZero Hamburg
