Unusually heavy rainfall struck southern Botswana and eastern South Africa from Feb. 16-20, flooding cities and killing at least 31 people. In Botswana, the government said nearly 5,500 people were affected, and more than 2,000 people evacuated. A new rapid study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a team of international climate scientists analyzing extreme weather events, has found that such heavy rainfall events are becoming more likely due to human-induced climate change. By looking at historical weather observations from the region between southern Botswana and South Africa, the researchers found an increasing trend in very wet five-day rainfall events over the last few decades. The team also estimated that similar five-day rainfall events are about 60% more intense in today’s world, which has warmed by 1.3° Celsius (2.3° Fahrenheit) on average since preindustrial times, before the widespread use of fossil fuels. The researchers were, however, unable to quantify how much human-induced climate change contributed to the latest February deluge, because the climate models they used produced inconsistent results. “We haven’t been able to quantify the effect, but as the world is warming, we are seeing more extreme rainfall events like this one,” report co-author Ben Clarke, a researcher at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, U.K., told Mongabay in an online briefing. Image showing wettest five-day period over southern Botswana from 1950-2025. Data from ERA5. Image courtesy of World Weather Attribution. “Indeed, as our climate continues to warm, it’s understood that this climate is likely to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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