Africa’s Sahel worries scientists:

Climate change is driving much drier conditions in Africa’s Sahel belt, which has experienced a 50-percent hike in record dry months in recent decades, scientists said.

Shifting climate patterns, meanwhile, have made parts of the United States, northern Europe and north Asia wetter, driving worsening flooding and extreme rainfall, said the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

Over the 1980-2013 period the scientists studied, record wet months rose by 25 percent in the east and central United States, for instance.

Lead author Jascha Lehmann told the Thomson Reuters Foundation the researchers had been “a little bit surprised by the very strong signal” on drying in Africa.

The findings suggest efforts to cut planet-warming emissions faster are crucial, he said, as “there are limits” to how much people can adapt if drought continues to worsen in the Sahel, a semi-arid zone that lies south of the Sahara desert.

While occasional record-setting months are not unusual, the uptick in record dry months was significant, he said.