Talk:Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa

Requested move 21 February 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved (non-admin closure) BegbertBiggs (talk) 22:39, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Climate Change in Middle East and North Africa → Climate change in the Middle East and North Africa – proper capitalizations and grammar X1\ (talk) 21:45, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Support per nom – to fix grammar and capitalization. Maybe even a speedy, uncontroversial move? Paintspot Infez (talk)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

I aim to improve the introduction of this article as I find it is not thorough and it does not provide context about the region and the overall issue. More statistics will be added (as I find that it lacks such), and the most important issues regarding Climate Change in the Middle East and North Africa will be included in order to bring fluency to the article - but also for first time readers to get the overview of this article from the introduction. The article contains sections on different countries of the MENA region, therefore in the introduction I will discuss the broader region and the issues they will suffer as a result of climate change

Emissions, Impacts and Policy
Hello fellow Wikipedians!

I have recently begun working on this article as part of a university course and will be making more edits over the coming weeks. Climate change is a topic I am very passionate about and I believe it is very important for information to be made available to the public regarding climate change's impacts upon MENA, a highly vulnerable region. I look forward to collaborating with you all in improving this article so we can set it free from its stub status. I have created sections covering emissions in the region, present and future impacts, and policy relating to climate change. I have also written the lead section for this article and added appropriate nav boxes, hat notes and categories. Finnrushton (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Man made emissions the sole cause of climate change?
The opening sentence in the emissions section of this article states that man made emissions are the cause of climate change. Whilst they are a big contributor, natural causes such as interglacial cycling and El Nino/La Nina also have an effect even though they occur over a much larger timescale. Removal of carbon sinks such as rainforests also cause climate change. Changing this sentence to state that man-made gasses are one of the biggest contributors seems more appropriate. Finnrushton (talk) 02:53, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Relation to Syrian Civil War
I writed in the section about current effects on water scarcity about the link to Syrian civil War with source 1, source 2 and source 3 but the text was deleted already 2 times. Why? While not all researchers agree about the importance of this factor still thee are many who think that climate change induced drought played a considerable role. I think it should be included.

--Alexander Sauda/אלכסנדר סעודה (talk) 09:53, 26 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey! I might of accidentally deleted that info when doing some rearranging for that section, my apologies. I added the NASA study that supports the middle east eye article you have referenced for added verifiability. Have also added a section on the 2007-2010 drought in Syria which was suggested to have contributed to the onset of the civil war. Finnrushton (talk) 03:53, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

"By Country" section needs work
The "By Country" section of this article does not appear to be adding much to this article or adhering to Wikipedia's good article criteria. Many of the claims made in this section are not referenced and contain grammatical errors. Moreover, If there are already pages dedicated to each country mentioned, people can go to those pages and read a more detailed account of climate change in those countries instead. I think this section could potentially be removed altogether, as i would assume this article is supposed to be addressing climate change in the broader MENA region. Finnrushton (talk) 05:31, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Finnrushton, I share your concern about this. There are 20-24 countries in the MENA region (or more, depending on the definition used). Are we in future planning to list each of them? Currently we have used the excerpt function for those countries who already have separate climate change articles, which is a bit better than how it was before. But I am not sure if this approach still makes sense when we have 20 countries? Maybe better to just refer people to a bullet point list where the countries are listed (but without excerpts)? What is the best options for our readers? EMsmile (talk) 08:25, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Suggested changes to headings and structure
I suggest to change the headings and structure of this article to be in line with the template that has been proposed here for all articles of the nature "Climate change in Country X": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Climate_change/Style_guide (see also discussion on that page's talk page). Anyone has any objections? If not, who's got time to give it a go? I am slowly working away at this for all the countries but would love some collaborators.EMsmile (talk) 08:02, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Rename or split this article?
So, from the ongoing discussion on the WikiProject talk page, it became clear that MENA/Middle East in general is not a term which international organizations prefer to use nowadays. This shift had been really recent, but it is undeniable. I.e. this article currently has the following paragraph:

As of January 2021, the UNICEF website groups the following set of 20 countries as belonging to the MENA region: 'Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, State of Palestine, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

This is cited to a UNICEF page which really did have a "Middle East and North Africa" heading as recently as in January 2021, when it was archived - nowadays, that page is gone and a search for "Middle East" on the UNICEF website returns no results. Similarly, UNEP has a paper on their website titled "The Environmental Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa", which was published on 25 March, 2020 - now, though, they use West Asia as a category.

And of course, the IPCC does not have Middle East in the AR6 WG2. Instead, it refers to West Asia in the Asia chapter and it also has a cross-chapter box on "The Mediterranean region". Thus, a question emerges. Is it better to:

1) Simply move the North Africa content here to Climate change in Africa and the rest to Climate change in Asia. This article would then presumably end up as a disambig asking readers to go to either of the two.

2) Resurrect Climate change in the Mediterranean (currently redirects to a section in the Mediterranean Sea article) in order to be more in line with the IPCC structure? Then, we would move material from this article and some parts of Climate change in Europe over to that new article (as well as filling it with AR6 material, obviously). This article would then redirect over there. The only issue I can see here is discoverability (i.e. are readers likely to look up that particular phrase? How to fit that on the navbox and link across the other articles?) InformationToKnowledge (talk) 10:21, 27 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I'd prefer to go by IPCC categories. Is there a West Asia and North Africa region in AR6? I do remember the Mediterranean hotspot. Bogazicili (talk) 18:18, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't seem to have either a full chapter or a cross-chapter box with that or similar name. The Mediterranean CCB seems likes the closest thing to it. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:16, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Lead section Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps
Hi! I wanted to ask why you felt my edit wasn't an improvement? The current lead section Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps compares the climate of the Middle East covering the complete period of record as of 2007 (1) with the climate of Northern Africa as projected for 2071-2100 under RCP8.5 (2), each from a different paper, which makes no sense. My edit uses one dataset published in 2023 (the second version of paper 2) comparing Western Asia's and Northern Africa's climate from 1991-2020 and its future predicted climate in 2071-2099 under medium emissions. What did you not like about my edit?

Thank you, BurqueMesa (talk) 00:52, 19 June 2024 (UTC)


 * We don't add galleries to the lead section (please see MOS:IMAGES for more info). The other issue is the fact that the new maps introduce new political ideas while also treading on a contentious topic (you'll notice that the Golan is shown as part of Israel in them). I know it wasn't meant and I'm sure you'll agree that unless a political dispute is relevant to the topic, then it shouldn't introduced into the article. In any case, this is something that can easily remedied by adjusting the maps (let me know if you want me to do it). M.Bitton (talk) 21:34, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * MOS:IMAGES says not to use galleries for ethnic groups, nothing about climate or geography. MOS:Lead section says nothing about not adding galleries.
 * Köppen-Geiger climate classification maps for Western Asia in the Impacts on the natural environment section and the Köppen climate classification article, the Köppen-Geiger climate classification world map, Köppen-Geiger climate classification map for Israel, and Köppen-Geiger climate classification map for Syria show the Golan Heights as part of Israel. Do these all need to be removed from English Wikipedia articles they are present on and replaced by an adjusted version? These maps are the first version from a 2018 paper by Beck et. al. which were improved in the 2023 paper, so preferably the updated 2023 maps would be adjusted. I would appreciate your help in adjusting them. BurqueMesa (talk) 06:05, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * MOS:LEAD consistently uses the word "image" (not a gallery), while MOS:IMAGELOC states that most images should be on the right side of the page. I have never come across an article that has a gallery in the lead section.
 * In a nutshell, I'd say yes, but it also depends on a number of other factors that I'd rather not go into atm. In any case, I adjusted the two new maps. I haven't given much thought to the others, but from the little that I saw, I'd say that it's probably easier to create new ones than to try to repair a huge (27 MB) SVG map that uses a low definition raster file.
 * As to your question about how to edit the maps, it all depends on how familiar you are with graphic editors. If you're new, then a good one to start with for vector editing is Inkscape. M.Bitton (talk) 17:51, 20 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you for adjusting the maps! I updated the gallery in the Temperature and weather changes subsection, under Impacts on the natural environment. I still feel like there should be a replacement for the current lead section images, like the lead section of Climate change in Europe or Climate change in the United States, but this seems difficult because there isn't really an organization covering the Middle East and North Africa besides the Arab League, which still excludes states such as Turkey, Iran, and Israel. I can't find any maps showing increased temperatures for MENA or the Arab League on Wikimedia Commons. BurqueMesa (talk) 19:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Also, thanks for the advice on map editing. I'll keep it in mind, especially if I come across more instances where it's necessary. BurqueMesa (talk) 19:45, 21 June 2024 (UTC)