NASA has blamed severe drought, which can be termed as the worst in last 900 years, for causing the extremely complicated disorders in the Middle East and disruptions of Syria and Iraq. According to a research conducted by NASA, the eastern Mediterranean Levant region, consisting Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey, has been under severe drought conditions since 1998.

Farmers’ suffering has been continuously increasing owing to lack of water, which is also adversely affecting the ecology of the region that is now characterized by crop failures, dust storms and record-breaking heat every year. NASA revealed that the region’s drought is approximately 50% drier compared to the driest era witnessed in last 500 years and 10-20% drier compared to the last 900 years of driest period.

NASA climate researchers analyzed the tree rings from the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern region since tree rings act as the ecological fingerprint for over several thousand years. During the drought period, the band of tree rings gets thinner and the thinner the bands become the duration of drought increases.

“If we look at recent events and we start to see anomalies that are outside this range of natural variability, then we can say with some confidence that it looks like this particular event or this series of events had some kind of human caused climate change contribution”, said Ben Cook, the lead author of current research paper.

To confirm the accuracy of the tree-ring map, the scientists used the historical documents from 1100 AD. According to Kevin Anchukaitis, the co-author of the study, there is a possibility for extensive disorder in food systems and prospective clashes over water resources, because it is not practical to depend on discovering better climate conditions in one region than another. The NASA scientists revealed that the phenomenon behind the weather persisting in the Middle East is the North Atlantic Oscillation and the East Atlantic Pattern.