Mega-dryness

Human-generated climate change, the result of enormous quantities of CO2 spewing into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels (in 2024, the CO2 annual rate set a new all-time record of 3.75 ppm or an 18,600% increase over natural variability of 0.02 ppm per annum, according to paleoclimate pre-industrial data) causing widespread interconnectivity merging of dry regions of the planet. This is a new feature of global warming.

“Our entire infrastructure and civilization are based around a climate that no longer exists.” (John Marsham, professor Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds)

Dry areas of the planet are merging into massive mega-dry behemoth regions reflective of how far advanced climate change has progressed, with global warming turning hotter, and hotter, especially 2023-24 when global mean temperature increased by 0.3°C or 10-fold in one year, ushering in a full year of 1.5°C above pre-industrial. According to Johan Rockström of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact, this kind of big increase in only one year has never happened before. Scientists are still bewildered.

Recent studies show mega-drying mergers advancing at alarming rates. Huge swaths of the planet are starting to resemble the science fiction world of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) with its desert ecosystem and water scarcity central to the plot, as actual climate change in today’s world adopts a science fiction veneer.

“We use NASA GRACE/GRACE-FO data to show that the continents have undergone unprecedented TWS (terrestrial water storage) loss since 2002. Drying areas of the planet increased by twice the size of California annually, creating ‘mega-drying regions’ across the Northern Hemisphere.” (Famiglietti, et al, Unprecedented Continental Drying, Shrinking Freshwater Availability, and Increasing Land Contributions to Sea Level Rise, Science Advances, July 25, 2025)

Multi-dimensional factors are found within mega-dryness: “Since 2002, 75% of the population lives in 101 countries that have been losing freshwater. Furthermore, the continents now contribute more freshwater to sea level rise than the ice sheets, and drying regions now contribute more than land glaciers and ice caps. Urgent action is required to prepare for the major impacts of results presented,” Ibid.

Alarmingly, four continental-scale mega-drying super-regions have formed a new feature for the planet. These super regions are all in the Northern Hemisphere (1) northern Canada (2) northern Russia (3) a contiguous region inclusive of southwestern North America and Central America (4) the massive, tri-continental region spanning from North Africa to Europe, through the Middle East and Central Asia, to northern China and South and Southeast Asia, which owes its expansion to the recent European drought.

In short, like The Blob (1958) of film fame, mega-dryness is spreading across the Northern Hemisphere. The consequences are only too obviously a fundamental shift in the foundations of civilization. Thousands of years of foundational development are now at risk from a measly couple of hundred years of burning fossil fuels.

Excepted: ‘Mega-Dryness Spreads Throughout Northern Hemisphere’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org