Aridification is More Dire than Drought

Grist: “Three-quarters of the world’s land is drying out, ‘redefining life on Earth.'” Droughts eventually come to an end, but when an area’s climate becomes drier, the ability to return to previous conditions is fundamentally lost. This is termed aridity, technically defined as an area where 90 percent of rainfall evaporates before reaching the ground. “Expanding drylands are widely considered the biggest contributor to the degradation of Earth’s agricultural systems.” Results include economic disruption, interal + external migration + adverse health impacts. “They intensify wildfires, sand storms, and dust storms while degrading ecosystems…also promote erosion and the salinization of water and soil.” Drylands—arid areas where water is hard to come by—now make up more than 40% of the planet (excluding Antarctica + Greenland), a likely permanent consequence of climate change, according to a landmark report by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD. “Another new analysis, by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations…found that roughly 10 percent of the world’s soils are affected by excess salt, with another 2.5 billion acres at risk. These interacting trends damage agriculture, biodiversity, + ecosystems, exacerbating food and water insecurity. ‘Some 7.6 percent of the planet’s land was remade by climate change between 1990 and 2020, with most of the impacted areas shifting from humid landscapes to drylands.’ Aggegated this represents a geographic expanse larger than Canada. In 2020 these areas were home to nearly a third of global population. I realize that as Americans, at this moment we are really focused climate-wise on the extraordinary cold affecting the eastern two-thirds of the 48 states. But the longer-term picture is that if we don’t radically address climate change, by century’s end, more than two-thirds of land [with the exception of Greenland + Antarctica] is expected to store less water. We have all seen falling rain not reaching the ground. I don’t want this to become the new norm.