Southern Africa floods that killed 300 fuelled by global warming

An estimated 300 people have died in extreme flooding across parts of southern Africa, including a one-in-50-year event that researchers said was worsened by climate change.

Nearly 800 000 people have been affected by the severe rains that started in December, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an update Thursday.

In Mozambique, the worst-hit country, rebuilding destroyed infrastructure will cost about $644 million, according to preliminary estimates from the authorities. That will further strain government finances that were already tight, and hit an economy struggling to emerge from a recession. At least 820 000 people have been affected by the extreme weather in one of the world’s poorest countries.

South Africa’s Kruger National Park, one of the continent’s biggest wildlife preserves, was part of a vast area straddling the two countries that received the highest rainfall on record over 10 days this month. Mozambique, which neighbours to the east, warned residents after crocodiles were seen swimming in a provincial capital that was submerged.

Some places measured a year’s worth of rain in a few days.

World Weather Attribution, which comprises researchers from several institutions, including Imperial College London and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said in a report on Thursday that the tropical low-pressure system that caused the January flooding was a one-in-50-year event in today’s climate.

The organisation said the La Niña weather phenomenon increased the 10-day rainfall intensity by about 22%, with global warming having around twice that impact. Model limitations for the region make it difficult to confidently estimate the magnitude attributable to climate change, the researchers said.

“However, we have confidence that climate change has increased both the likelihood and the intensity of the 10-day rainfall, based on the observed signal, physical understanding, and existing literature,” they said.

Counting losses

At least 1.3 million people have been affected and 560 000 displaced across the affected countries, according to the Southern African Development Community bloc.

Authorities in Mozambique are still counting the losses, with long stretches of roads completely destroyed as the floodwaters subside. Some have compared it to the devastating floods that killed hundreds in the nation about 26 years ago.

“Early assessments?indicate?that the scale and impact of this disaster surpass those of the catastrophic floods of 2000, widely regarded as the worst in southern Africa’s living memory,” said the Peace Parks Foundation, which operates nature reserves in Mozambique that were impacted by the flooding.

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