[ad_1]
Climate change increased the rainfall that pounded southeastern Africa. Hundreds of people were killed in two severe storms in 2022.
However, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact location due to a lack of data from regional areas. Just how important a role climate change playedScientists stated April 11 at a news conference.
The World Weather Attribution Network, a consortium of climate scientists as well as disaster experts, published the findings online on April 11.
From January to March, southeast Africa was hit by a series heavy rains and tropical storms. The researchers examined two events in this study: Tropical Storm Ana, which caused flooding in northern Madagascar and Malawi in January and claimed at least 70 lives; and Cyclone Batsirai in February, which devastated southern Madagascar and left hundreds of people homeless.
The team first chose a three-day period of heavy rainfall for each storm to search for climate change’s fingerprints. The researchers then attempted to collect observational data from the area to reconstruct historical daily rain records from 1981 to 2022.
Only four weather stations in Mozambique provided consistent, high-quality data that spanned these decades. The team was able, however, to create simulations of the climate for the region using the data available.
Izidine Pito, a South African climatologist and climatologist, stated at the news conference that the sum of these simulations indicated that climate change had a role to play in intensifying the rains. But with insufficient historical rainfall data, the team “could not quantify the precise contribution” of climate change, Pinto said.
The study highlights how information on extreme weather events “is very much biased toward the Global North … [whereas] there are big gaps in the Global South,” said climate scientist Friedericke Otto of Imperial College London.
That’s an issue also highlighted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Insufficient Southern Hemisphere data is cited as a barrier by the IPCC. Assessing the likelihood of tropical cyclones becoming more frequent and intenseBeyond the North Atlantic OceanSN: 8/9/21).
