A recent NASA study found that an ongoing drought in the Middle East is the worst in the last 900 years.
Scientists studied tree rings to determine the length and frequency of droughts over the last several centuries in order to determine whether the current drought, which started in 1998, was unusual.

“If we look at recent events, we start to see anomalies that are outside this range of natural variability,” said study lead author Dr. Ben Cook in a NASA press release. “It looks like this particular event or this series of events had some kind of human-caused climate change contribution.”