Farmers and ranchers in Australia’s New South Wales have been struggling through several years of drought that dried out the soil. Credit: Brook Mitchell/Getty Images Global warming has been fueling droughts since the early 20th Century, when soils started drying out at the same time across parts of North and Central America, Eurasia, Australia and the Mediterranean, new research shows. The researchers say the surprising early-century findings provide the clearest signal yet that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are changing the hydroclimate in ways that can devastate agriculture, health and livelihoods. In a climate unaltered by greenhouse gases, droughts in different parts of the world would be caused by different influences at different times. In the Southwestern United States, for example, the El Niño-La Niña cycle is a big driver of drought, while the Mediterranean region is sensitive to cyclical changes in the Atlantic Ocean’s winds and currents. But in […]