Global warming situation

There are many causes of the European refugee crisis, but one thing is certain despite headlines to the contrary: Climate change is not the dominant factor. The refugees fleeing war torn nations like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as those seeking economic opportunities lacking in Africa, are not risking their lives along treacherous sea and land routes because of global warming-related factors.

But the ongoing humanitarian disaster provides a teaching opportunity for a time not too long from now when the first true climate refugees trigger a similar situation. With sea level rise slowly swallowing Pacific island nations and warming sea and air temperatures exacerbating droughts and floods around the world, we're closer than we've ever been to a climate change-triggered migration event.

President Obama warned of this last week, in a foreboding speech in Anchorage, Alaska, on Sept. 2, when he spoke about the consequences of business as usual in the face of global warming pollution:

"... There’s not going to be a nation on this Earth that’s not impacted negatively, " he said. "People will suffer. Economies will suffer. Entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems. More drought; more floods; rising sea levels; greater migration; more refugees; more scarcity; more conflict."

Global warming connects to Syria conflict but ...

There is evidence showing that global warming contributed to a severe drought that preceded the Syrian civil war, but climate links to some of the other conflicts flaring up and contributing to the tide of refugees, such as the war in Yemen, are not yet established.

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year found that global warming doubled to tripled the risk of a crippling drought in the Fertile Crescent as severe as the one that occurred shortly before the fighting broke out.

Timeline of events in Syria leading up to the civil war.

Image: Kelley et al. 2014, PNAS

Previous studies had shown that the drought, along with other factors such as an influx of refugees from the conflict in Iraq next door, helped prime Syria for conflict by 2011, when the uprising began, before transitioning into an all-out civil war.

A key factor that helped lead to the outbreak of hostilities was the Syrian government's poor response to the drought, which led to an influx of poor, rural farmers flooding Syria's cities looking for jobs, the study found.

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