User:Dburne3/sandbox

Article 1: Sahel drought
Working under the Potential contributing factors AND Late 20th Century Droughts

Plagiarism search/reference assessment

Searched for a reference for: "Using GFDL CM2.X, these climate model simulations indicated that the general late 20th century Sahel drying trend was attributable to human-induced factors; largely due to an increase in greenhouse gases and partly due to an increase in atmospheric aerosols." All of the sources which copied this line verbatim were quoting directly from Wikipedia. I also searched through the citations listed directly before and after the statement--neither of which provided an exact nor similar statement. Some of the articles which directly quote it go back to 2008, which makes me think the original source has been lost to the internet, reused too many times for the original to be found, or possibly was originally in print.

What added, source(added under Possible contributing factors): Information on studies done to attribute the drought to climate change based off of atmospheric aerosols. (Source: Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Sep2013, Vol. 94 Issue 9, p1304-1305. 2p.).

What added, source (added under Late 20th Century droughts): Information on the effects of the droughts--declines in biodiversity, increases in other disturbances. (Source: African Journal of Ecology. Sep2016, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p268-280. 13p.)

Linked to

African Journal of Ecology (under Late 20th Century droughts)

Intertropical Convergence Zone (Under possible contributing factors)

My contribution

Under Late 20th century droughts:

A literature review from the African Journal of Ecology summarized the environmental changes that species faced after the late 20th century droughts, some of which includes (but is not limited to) severe declines in biodiversity and increases in other disturbances, such as fires.

Under Possible contributing factors:

A study published in 2013, done at the University of Washington, suggests that atmospheric aerosols caused a downward shift in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The shift, the study says, left normally rainy areas in Central Africa much drier.