The sun-baked northern states of Mexico are suffering under the worst drought since the government began recording rainfall 70 years ago reports Francisco Rodriguez at the Associated Press in the Detroit News. Crops of corn, beans and oats are withering in the fields. About 1.7 million cattle have died of starvation and thirst. Hardest hit are five states in Mexico’s north, a region that is being parched by the same drought that has dried out the southwest United States. The government is trucking water to 1,500 villages scattered across the nation’s northern expanse, and sending food to poor farmers who have lost all their crops. Life isn’t likely to get better soon. The next rainy season isn’t due until June, and there’s no guarantee normal rains will come then. Such a severe drought is the sort predicted to occur under climate change, and this could substantially increase migration into the US from Mexico. In a 2010 study, researchers noted that drought conditions correlated with surges in Mexican migration, and predicted that climate change could cause substantial future migration northward.
Source
Dry spell the worst since 1941 when rainfall started being tracked
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20111203/NATION/112030350/Northern-Mexico-wilts-in-record-setting-drought#ixzz1g0LsMQnt
Also:
Changing climate for Mexican migration
Falling crop yields due to climate change could boost migration into US, say
researchers. http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/m/1820/250978/article/news/43428
See also: Shuaizhang Feng, Alan B. Krueger, and Michael Oppenheimer.
Linkages among climate change, crop yields and Mexico–US cross-border migration PNAS published ahead of print July 26, 2010, doi:10.1073/pnas.1002632107
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/07/16/1002632107.abstract
