A new WMO report shows that the foundations of daily life across the Arab region, including farms, reservoirs and aquifers that feed and sustain millions of people, are being pushed to the brink due to human-caused warming.
A six-year drought in the Maghreb, a sun-drenched region of northwestern Africa, has plunged wheat yields, forcing countries such as Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to import more grain, while also sending global prices rising.
Reservoir levels in parts of Morocco have fallen to record lows. The government has imposed water restrictions in major cities, including limits on domestic use and cutting irrigation for farmers. Water systems in Lebanon are already overwhelmed by floods and drought, and in Iraq and Syria, small farmers are abandoning their land as rivers shrink and seasonal rains become unreliable.
The WMO report projects 2024 as the hottest year ever in the Arab world. Summer heat waves spread and continued into Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. Parts of Iraq recorded six to 12 days of maximum temperatures above 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit), conditions that are life-threatening even for healthy adults. The number of heatwave days has increased in recent decades across the region while humidity has declined, the report said. The dangerous combination speeds up soil drying and crop damage.
In contrast, other parts of the region—the United Arab Emirates, Oman and southern Saudi Arabia—were hit by devastating record rainfall and flooding throughout 2024. Rola Dashti, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, which often works with WMO to analyze climate impacts, said the extremes will test the limits of adaptation.
Extreme climate kills at least 300 people in the region in 2024. This is having an impact on countries that are already struggling with internal conflicts, and where losses are underinsured and underreported. In Sudan alone, floods damaged more than 40 percent of the country’s agricultural land.
But with 15 of the world’s driest countries in the region, water scarcity is the top issue. Governments are investing in desalination, wastewater recycling and other measures to strengthen water security, but the adaptation gap between risk and readiness is still widening.
The worst is yet to come, Dashti said in a WMO statement, with climate models “showing a potential increase of up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) in average temperatures by the end of the century under high emissions scenarios.” The new report is important, he said, because it “empowers the region to prepare for the climate realities of tomorrow.”
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
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