Recent drying of the Fertile Crescent: natural or externally forced? (manuscript in preparation) EGU General Assembly 2014, Vienna, Austria Colin Kelley 1,2,3 , Shahrzad Mohtadi 4 , Mark Cane 5 , Richard Seager 5 and Yochanan Kushnir 5 1 Climate Hazards Group, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. 2 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO, USA. 3 USAID FEWS NET, Washington DC, USA. 4 Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 5 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY …and the social implications for Syria