My suspicion is that most of those droughts of late are caused by creeping deforestation, crossing some threshold, beyond which the effects are suddenly more profound.
We as a civilization greatly underestimate role of forests in the current climate crisis.
"The “biotic pump of atmospheric moisture” describes the physical and ecological mechanism that explains how forests attract moisture-laden winds to provide their own water[i]. This is why large continental regions such as Amazonia, the Congo and Siberia remain so wet. ...
Moisture added to a region with scarce vegetation is not resilient: the ecosystem simply loses it and remains dry. When the biotic pump is sufficiently active, the ecosystem switches to a wet optimal stable condition. This switch happens even if the initial amount of moisture is sub-optimal. The stronger the biotic pump, the sooner the system returns to the optimum increasing the inflow of atmospheric moisture."
"Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than Earth's largest river, the Amazon River."
"For much of human history, most of the world’s land was wilderness: forests, grasslands and shrubbery dominated its landscapes. Over the last few centuries, this has changed dramatically: wild habitats have been squeezed out by turning it into agricultural land."
"There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein."
"The expansion of agriculture has been one of humanity’s largest impacts on the environment. It has transformed habitats and is one of the greatest pressures for biodiversity: of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them."
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 7.8 ms ] threadWe as a civilization greatly underestimate role of forests in the current climate crisis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotic_pump
https://www.thebioticpump.com/what-is-the-biotic-pump
"The “biotic pump of atmospheric moisture” describes the physical and ecological mechanism that explains how forests attract moisture-laden winds to provide their own water[i]. This is why large continental regions such as Amazonia, the Congo and Siberia remain so wet. ... Moisture added to a region with scarce vegetation is not resilient: the ecosystem simply loses it and remains dry. When the biotic pump is sufficiently active, the ecosystem switches to a wet optimal stable condition. This switch happens even if the initial amount of moisture is sub-optimal. The stronger the biotic pump, the sooner the system returns to the optimum increasing the inflow of atmospheric moisture."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river
"Atmospheric rivers are typically several thousand kilometers long and only a few hundred kilometers wide, and a single one can carry a greater flux of water than Earth's largest river, the Amazon River."
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use
"For much of human history, most of the world’s land was wilderness: forests, grasslands and shrubbery dominated its landscapes. Over the last few centuries, this has changed dramatically: wild habitats have been squeezed out by turning it into agricultural land."
"There is also a highly unequal distribution of land use between livestock and crops for human consumption. If we combine pastures used for grazing with land used to grow crops for animal feed, livestock accounts for 77% of global farming land. While livestock takes up most of the world’s agricultural land it only produces 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of total protein."
"The expansion of agriculture has been one of humanity’s largest impacts on the environment. It has transformed habitats and is one of the greatest pressures for biodiversity: of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them."