The 15-year drought that ended in 2012 in parts of the Middle East was probably the worst dry spell in the region for 900 years.

Benjamin Cook at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and his colleagues analysed tree-ring patterns from 1100 to 2012 to estimate drought variability in the Mediterranean. Summer droughts of similar magnitude to those that have hit the western Mediterranean and Greece in recent decades did previously occur. But the researchers found an 89% likelihood that the 1998–2012 drought in the part of the eastern Mediterranean called the Levant was the driest since 1100.

Climate change will probably increase the risk of drought in the region, potentially aggravating sociopolitical and economic disruption in crisis regions such as Syria, the authors say.

J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos. http://doi.org/bcz2 (2016)