Human-caused heating behind extreme droughts in Syria, Iraq and Iran, study finds

Millions of people's lives wrecked by droughts that used to happen once every 250 years but now expected once a decade

Extreme droughts that have wrecked the lives of millions of people in Syria, Iraq and Iran since 2020 would not have happened without human-caused global heating, a study has found.

The climate crisis means such long-lasting and severe droughts are no longer rare, the analysis showed. In the Tigris-Euphrates basin, which covers large parts of Syria and Iraq, droughts of this severity happened about once every 250 years before global heating - now they are expected once a decade.