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Sahel Droughts? – Perhaps They Should Have Read HH Lamb!

June 1, 2015
tags: ,

By Paul Homewood  

 

h/t Paul2  

 

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3105940/Climate-change-bringing-rain-Africa-30-years-Live-Aid-tried-help-end-famine.html

 

The Mail reports:

 

Climate change means rain is returning to previously drought-stricken areas of Africa exactly 30 years since Live Aid raised £150million to help starving people there, a new study has revealed.

A severe lack of rainfall during the 1970s and 80s led to a persistent drought and famine, killing more than 100,00 people in countries such as Ethiopia.

The crisis prompted singers Sir Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to organise the Live Aid concerts in July 1985 to raise cash for the relief fund.

 

Severe drought in the Sahel area of Africa in the 1970s and 80s caused widespread famine leading to the deaths of 100,000 people 

 

Severe drought in the Sahel area of Africa in the 1970s and 80s caused widespread famine leading to the deaths of 100,000 people

 

The heartbreaking images of the suffering in Ethiopia came to the attention of public after they were broadcast on the BBC

But now research by scientists at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, has shown how increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which have caused climate change, have triggered a return of crucial seasonal rains to the Sahel region.

The researchers used a supercomputer climate simulator to study different influences on North African rainfall.

And when they examined the increases in rainfall since the 1980s, they found around three-quarters of the additional rain was caused by rising greenhouse gas concentrations.

Professor Rowan Sutton, who led the research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, said: ‘Scientists often study how greenhouse gas levels in the future will influence the climate.

 A weather chart showing how average rainfall in the Sahel was very low in the 1980s but is now increasing thanks to global warming 

 

Well congratulations to Prof Sutton and the team! It’s only taken you forty two years to work out what HH Lamb already knew.

This is what Lamb wrote in the UNESCO Courier in August 1973.

 

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http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000748/074891eo.pdf

 

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As geographer Jean Dresch pointed out in the same issue, the problems of drought certainly weren’t confined to the Sahel:

 

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There is no evidence, of course, that we are seeing anything other than a cyclical pattern, and that humans have nothing to do with it at all. Indeed it is significant that Sahel rainfall was as high as now between 1920 and 1950, suggesting that global, or at least NH, temperatures may have been just as high then.

5 Comments
  1. June 1, 2015 6:29 pm

    Reblogged this on the WeatherAction News Blog and commented:
    Apparently if the climate of the past occurs again then 75% (it should have been 97% in keeping with the CONsensus) is due to carbon emissions! (I kid you not). Being kind the researchers may have amnesia conveniently brought on by the stress of ‘ looming UN Paris summit in December. I wonder if come 2016 they will bring out the Ernest Saunders defence and say it was the Atlantic Meridional Oscillation all along?

    If I am being kind this is just gilding the lily –
    Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,
    To guard a title that was rich before,
    To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
    To throw a perfume on the violet,
    To smooth the ice, or add another hue
    Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
    To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
    Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

    However, polishing a turd is probably more appropriate as there is no lily to furnish here just wanton gross advocacy.

  2. Elaine Supkis permalink
    June 1, 2015 8:01 pm

    Yes, when the Atlantic Ocean goes into a cold cycle, we get far fewer hurricanes and less rain in the Sahara/Sahel regions.

    This is simple to understand so of course the global warmists can’t figure this out.

  3. June 1, 2015 10:22 pm

    Read this press release from the university of Southampton on AMO. https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/global-climate-on-the-verge-of-multi-decadal-change/
    (It’s the AMO stupid)

    Plus ocean warming generating more precipitation

  4. Graeme No.3 permalink
    June 2, 2015 4:51 pm

    Professor Rowan Sutton said: ‘Scientists often study how greenhouse gas levels in the future will influence the climate.

    The same old stupidity. Despite any evidence, any proof, that CO2 is doing anything, they interpret all natural changes as due to the increasing level of CO2. I wonder will they be still saying so in 5 or 10 years time?

    Silly me. Of course they will; look at Paul Erhlich. Wrong for 50 years and still venerated.

  5. June 2, 2015 8:32 pm

    Correct. It is cooling so the diff between poles and equator rises, causing more rainfall at lower latitudes and less at higher latitudes. Hence, the flooding of the Nile can be linked to the Gleissberg cycle.

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