Eos has an interesting article this week discussing the impact of distant volcanic eruptions on the flow of the Nile River. A new paper in Nature Communications discusses the evidence “indicating that a series of eruptions may have caused sharp drop-offs in the summer rainfall usually brought by the African monsoon.” The cooling from the eruptions may have drastically cut the rainfall in the African highlands which serve as the base source for the Nile’s stream flow. This would have caused civic unrest because of the associated difficulty growing crops with little water for irrigation. You can read more about it here.
