Global warming worsening deadly flooding in Africa, warn scientists
23-Oct-2024Africa is bearing the brunt of climate change despite producing tiny percentage of global emissions.
Global warming intensified the rainy season in many African countries in 2024, sparking deadly floods, according to scientists.
The World Weather Attribution (WWA) network said on Wednesday that human-driven climate change, caused by the use of fossil fuels, had made seasonal downpours across 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 at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and one of the study’s authors.
He pointed out that “spells of heavy summer rainfall” had become the “new normal” in Sudan, Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad.
“With every fraction of a degree of warming, the risk of extreme floods will keep increasing,” Pinto added, calling for the United Nations COP29 climate summit to “accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels” when it meets in Azerbaijan next month.
