Global warming worsening deadly flooding in Africa, warn scientists

Africa is bearing the brunt of clime alteration contempt producing tiny percent of planetary emissions.

Global warming intensified the rainy play successful galore African countries successful 2024, sparking deadly floods, according to scientists.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) web said connected Wednesday that human-driven clime change, caused by the usage of fossil fuels, had made seasonal downpours crossed the Niger and Lake Chad basins 5-20 percent worse this year, unleashing a humanitarian catastrophe.

“These results are incredibly concerning,” said Izidine Pinto, a researcher astatine the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and 1 of the study’s authors.

He pointed retired that “spells of dense summertime rainfall” had go the “new normal” successful Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.

“With each fraction of a grade of warming, the hazard of utmost floods volition support increasing,” Pinto added, calling for the United Nations COP29 clime acme to “accelerate the modulation distant from fossil fuels” erstwhile it meets successful Azerbaijan adjacent month.

Floods killed astir 1,500 radical and displaced much than 1 cardinal successful West and Central Africa this year, according to UN assistance bureau OCHA. The rains besides overwhelmed dams successful Nigeria and Sudan.

Such downpours “could hap each year” if planetary temperatures summation to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) supra pre-industrial levels, warned WWA. It forecasts that this could hap arsenic aboriginal arsenic the 2050s.

The network’s scientists focused connected war-torn Sudan, wherever millions of displaced radical person been uprooted by struggle and driven into flood-prone areas.

They utilized modelling to analyse existent upwind trends, comparing them with patterns successful a satellite without human-induced warming, uncovering that monthlong spells of aggravated rainfall successful parts of Sudan had go heavier arsenic a apt effect of clime change.

“Africa has contributed a tiny magnitude of c emissions globally, but is being deed the hardest by utmost weather,” said Joyce Kimutai, researcher astatine the Centre for Environmental Policy astatine Imperial College successful London.

The relation of clime alteration successful the floods was compounded by different human-made problems, said scientists, calling for amended attraction of dams and concern successful aboriginal informing systems.

“This is lone going to support getting worse if we support burning fossil fuels,” said Clair Barnes from the Centre for Environmental Policy.

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Al Jazeera and quality agencies