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With climate and vegetation data, ucsb geographers closer topredicting droughts in africa by 123wert sdfsf
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With climate and vegetation data, ucsb geographers closer topredicting droughts in africa by 123WERT SDFSF
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| Article Posted: 03/19/2013 |
| Article Views: 58 |
| Articles Written: 2217 - MORE ARTICLES FROM THIS AUTHOR |
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With climate and vegetation data, ucsb geographers closer topredicting droughts in africa |
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What might happen if droughts were predicted months ahead of time?Food aid and other humanitarian efforts could be put togethersooner and executed better, say UC Santa Barbara geographers ChrisFunk, Greg Husak, and Joel Michaelsen. After over a decade of gathering and analyzing climate andvegetation data from East Africa, the researchers, who are part ofthe U.S. Agency for International Development's Famine EarlyWarning System Network (FEWS NET), say there is enough evidence toassociate climate conditions in the region with projected rainfalldeficits that could lead to food shortages. "We've been looking at climate in East Africa and trying to relatethat back to patterns in sea surface temperatures, rainfall, andwinds over the Indian and Pacific oceans," said Funk, who analyzesand predicts large-scale climate anomalies in Africa. Results showthat over the last 14 years, the number of droughts has doubled inEast Africa.
Roughly half of the last 14 years have been droughtyears. "We've been worried about these trends for a long time," saidMichaelsen, who studies the patterns of vegetation greening andbrowning in the area. "This year marks a bit of a watershed becausewe're starting to understand more the specific structure of thesedroughts, which is what underlay our early warning projections thisyear." Through the climate data, coupled with satellite data that hasrecorded the patterns of vegetation greening and browning over thelast decade, the researchers have detected a pattern that points tothe likelihood of water shortages months ahead of time - a patternthe U.S. government is taking seriously. A recent alert from the government-run USAID agency has taken intoaccount FEWS NET's projection of the likelihood of low rainfallthis March-May rainy season in East Africa, as USAID prepares itsoutreach efforts.
"It's already a billion-dollar problem that they're thinking needs$50 million more; they're already anticipating a 5 percent increasein the need for aid," said Husak, who specializes in analyzingremote sensing data and rainfall. The area, which includeschronically food-insecure countries like Ethiopia and Somalia, isstill recovering from last year's famine. The U.S. government spends more than a billion dollars in food aidevery year. FEWS NET was created after the 1984-1985 Ethiopianfamine, an event that killed over a million people beforesufficient food aid could be airlifted into the country.
FEWS NEThas since become a leader in integrating monitoring, forecasting,and climate trends analysis. Famine, say the researchers, is the result of more than severeclimate: Conflict, political unrest, corruption, and other humanfactors are also major contributors to the crisis. Additionally, relief is not just a matter of putting food on a boatand distributing it among the locals. If food aid is sent to aplace that doesn't need it, the surplus could distort the localmarket by devaluing the prices of local products. Conversely, notproviding food aid quickly enough distorts the market in the otherdirection, limiting access to available resources.
"Prices of food have gone up," said Michaelsen. "It's not thebrownness (of the vegetation) that causes food insecurity; it's theprice of food." The challenge, say the geographers, will be for aidagencies to determine where their finite resources will go. In the long term, and with more information, Michaelsen, Husak, andFunk, along with the extensive network of colleagues in FEWS NET,hope to gain a better understanding of the effects the changingclimate will have on the abilities of a region - and the agenciesthat support it - to prevent future crises. "There are going to be a lot of surprises, and how agile we are atresponding to those surprises is going to make a big difference,"said Michaelsen. I am an expert from Security & Protection, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as shark teeth necklace , shark teeth necklaces.
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