Johannesburg, South Africa:
A prolonged heat wave that hit Madagascar in October would not have occurred without human-induced climate change, a scientific study said Thursday.
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group said the heatwave on the Indian Ocean island, which affected millions of people, would have been “virtually impossible without human-induced climate change”.
The study by thirteen researchers looked at three variables to investigate the heat wave: the average temperatures on the island in October and the seven-day minimum and maximum temperatures in the capital Antananarivo.
“The analysis found that human-induced climate change made the month-long heat, seven-day maximum temperatures and seven-day minimum temperatures about 1 to 2 degrees hotter,” the WWA report said.
While the temperature increase may not seem like much, Sayanti Sengupta, technical advisor at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, said that “an increase of even half a degree could push thousands more people to their physiological limits.”
Sengupta added that it could also cause “heat stress” and loss of life.
According to the international disaster database EM-DAT, more than 13,000 people in Africa will have died in extreme weather events in 2023, more than on any other continent this year.
Yet extreme heat in Africa is severely underreported and understudied, the WWA said, making it difficult to identify the reported impacts of Madagascar’s dangerous temperatures and also affecting climate financing.
About 91 percent of Malagasy people live in poverty, and many lack access to clean water and electricity, making them “highly vulnerable to extreme heat.”
And many live in informal housing, making it harder to access strategies to cope with the heat.
Although October is the start of the hot and wet season, temperatures were as high as during December and January, the peak of the country’s warm season.
“With heat waves set to increase in Madagascar, it is critical that communities and governments take steps to become more resilient,” said Rondrotiana Barimalala, senior researcher at the Norwegian Research Center and the Bjerknes Center for Climate Research.
Investments in early warning systems and predicting extreme heat are of great urgency, the WWA said.
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