Argentina, Uruguay and Chile are going through extreme drought and high temperatures causing crop losses and putting food security, access to water, people’s health and ecosystems at risk.
Scientists from Argentina, Colombia, France, the United States, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have collaborated to assess the extent to which human-induced climate change has altered the likelihood and intensity of the low rainfall that has led to drought. , focusing on the three particularly severe months, from October to December 2022.
The analysis of the World Weather Attribution has concluded that climate change is not the main driver of reduced precipitation. However, he has shown that Climate change has caused an increase in temperatures in the region, which has likely reduced water availability and worsened the impacts of the drought.
The high impact of drought on agriculture and economic activity highlights the need to reduce vulnerability to lack of rainfall, take measures to improve water management and anticipation of drought through seasonal forecasts and establish insurance mechanisms to help farmers cope with these phenomena and improve resilience.
Economic impact
Argentina, despite being one of the main wheat exporters in the world, expects that the agricultural exports by 2023 fall by 28% compared to 2022 levels. According to reports from the World Weather Attribution, crop health in Argentina is the worst in the last 40 years, with serious repercussions expected on wheat and soybean crops. Between January 2022 and January 2023, Argentina’s grain and oilseed export earnings have already decreased by 61%.
Uruguaywith 60% of its territory affected by extreme drought, declared the agricultural emergency in October 2022. More than 75,000 people suffer from a lack of access to drinking water and access to water for crops and livestock is also limited.
For its part, Chile is going through the longest drought in the region in at least a thousand yearsaccording to the last World Meteorological Organization report on the state of the climate in Latin America. After 13 years of low rainfall, the situation aggravates the tendency to desiccation and places the country at the head of the water crisis from the area.
Extreme temperatures
The region also experiences intense heat waves, whose frequency and duration have increased due to climate change. In recent study conducted in the area, scientists from the World Weather Attribution have found that human-induced climate change has made extreme temperatures in December 2022 about 60 times more likely.
According to him National Meteorological Service of Argentina, the months of November to January have been the hottest in history and the eighth heat wave of the season is already being recorded. This has caused devastating fires in the center of Argentina, and also in Chile, melting Andean glaciers, harming air quality and sending up columns of smoke across the Pacific.
The glaciers of Chile and Argentina have receded considerably in the last two decades.
Three consecutive years of La Niña
A likely important factor in the low rainfall is that South America is currently experiencing the effects of a third consecutive year of La Niña, a natural phenomenon that greatly influences weather patterns in various parts of the world and causes a higher probability of less precipitation in many parts of this region.
The World Meteorological Organization will publish its next update on El Niño and La Niña phenomena and global seasonal climate at the end of February.
