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The dried up bed of a reservoir in Luoyang City in Henan province in February 2009 during a prolonged drought
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The drought was so crushing that the government said it would give almost US$13 billion in drought relief.
Rainfalls across the region were down 80 percent from average levels.
And hundreds of thousands of people went thirsty as reservoirs dried up.
It’s very difficult to prove that a single disaster like a drought or freak snow storm is directly caused by climate change.
But now more and more top scientists agree that such increasingly frequent severe weather is one of the many worrying signs of growing climate change.
Back in February, Xu Yinlong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences told media that climate change was to blame for the drought.
"This drought is occurring in front of the big backdrop of global warming and is part of the phenomenon of extreme weather events," Xu said. "The direct cause is months of lack of rainfall, but it definitely is connected with climate change."
Climate change is already costing us billions of dollars to patch up things like droughts and floods.
The bill is only going to climb as the effects of climate change become more and more devastating.
So doesn’t it make sense to spend money on stopping it today?
Rainfalls across the region were down 80 percent from average levels.
And hundreds of thousands of people went thirsty as reservoirs dried up.
It’s very difficult to prove that a single disaster like a drought or freak snow storm is directly caused by climate change.
But now more and more top scientists agree that such increasingly frequent severe weather is one of the many worrying signs of growing climate change.
Back in February, Xu Yinlong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences told media that climate change was to blame for the drought.
"This drought is occurring in front of the big backdrop of global warming and is part of the phenomenon of extreme weather events," Xu said. "The direct cause is months of lack of rainfall, but it definitely is connected with climate change."
Climate change is already costing us billions of dollars to patch up things like droughts and floods.
The bill is only going to climb as the effects of climate change become more and more devastating.
So doesn’t it make sense to spend money on stopping it today?
