New research has found out that the war tearing Syria apart can be blamed for a record drought worsened by global warming.

Scientists laid out a case that the drought was triggered a series of events that started with 1.5 million impoverished farmers being forced off their land. They headed to cities, already overburdened with Iraqi refugees and set up illegal settlements.

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These became havens for unemployment, crime and eventually political uprisings over government indifference.

"There are various things going on, but you're talking about 1.5 million people migrating from the rural north to the cities. It was a contributing factor to the social unraveling that occurred that eventually led to the civil war," said climate scientist Richard Seager at Columbia, a co-author of the study.

Using existing studies and their own research, the authors showed that since 1900, the area has suffered warming of 1 to 1.2 degrees Centigrade (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit), and about a 10 percent reduction in wet-season precipitation. They found it matched models of human-influenced global warming, and thus could not be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. The higher temperatures also have increased evaporation of moisture from soils during the usually hot summers. Together, these factors caused a series of droughts in the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s that culminated with the worst on record from 2006 to 2010.

The study's authors do not claim climate change is the sole reason for Syria's civil war. Lead author Colin Kelley at the University of California said there are also numerous factors involved, including the oppressive Assad regime, an influx of more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, the tumult of the Arab Spring, as well as the drought. Researchers said they couldn't say which factors were the most important.

Peter Gleick from non-profit research institute Pacific Institute said the latest study validates the potential threats of climate change.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tagsglobal warming, Civil war, syria civil war, drought