Spread of Drylands Will Hit Poorer Nations Hardest

If global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the outlook for at least half the inhabited planet looks arid. By 2100, according to new research, at least half − and perhaps as much as 56% − of the land surface of the planet will be classified as dryland.

Dryland, to a geographer, is not desert:  it is terrain on which rain certainly falls, but rainfall is balanced by evaporation and transpiration through plant tissues.  That is, dryland offers a precarious living to a sparse population.

It doesn’t take much – overgrazing, erosion, ambitious cropping − to tip the balance and turn the land into desert.  Right now, 38% of humanity makes a living on the drylands.

So the report in Nature Climate Change by atmospheric scientist Jianping Huang and colleagues at Lanzhou University in China that under global warming scenarios, drylands are to expand is very bad news for those who are already among the poorest in the world.

Climate simulations
That is because 78% of expansion of drylands – and 50% of the planet’s population growth – will occur in the developing countries.

Climate scientists have already predicted that, in a warming world, arid regions are likely to get even less rain, while humid ones could be at greater risk of flooding.

Read more at Spread of Drylands Will Hit Poorer Nations Hardest