Dire warning on climate change in Africa

IF MAN-made climate change is not reduced, temperatures in Southern Africa could increase by up to 6°C at the end of the century, leading to drought, decreased crop production, heatwaves and food insecurity.

CSIR researcher Dr Francois Engelbrecht and his colleagues have just published a paper modelling temperature changes on the continent and in Southern Africa, and the results reveal a dire future.

The paper, titled “Projections of rapidly rising surface temper- atures over Africa under low mitigation”, shows that Southern African temperatures rise at a much faster rate than elsewhere.

The modelling of increased temperatures is consistent with measurements taken over the past 50 years.

Engelbrecht said Southern African temperatures were already rising more than twice as fast as the global average increase.

Globally over the last century temperatures had risen at 1°C per century. “But in Southern Africa the increase has been more than two degrees.”

He said the CSIR had one of on- ly two supercomputers in Africa that had the capacity to do the data crunching and modelling needed to make climate change predictions on the continent.

The data showed that the continent would be three to six degrees warmer by the end of the century.

“In South Africa, in the interior places where we have 10 days per year that are regarded as heatwaves, this could increase tenfold,” Engelbrecht said.

The warnings come ahead of the United Nations COP21 climate change summit in Paris in November and December.