More fatal disasters for SA east coast: Wits study
Scientists have warned cities and towns in regions on the South Africa's east coast to prepare for more frequent and deadly floods.
Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand say the flood disaster in Durban, in April 2022, was made worse by climate change with rainfall twice of what it would have been without global warming.
Professor Francois Engelbrecht, the study's lead researcher, says rainfall over the two days in April was 40% to 107% above normal.
READ: Weather office issues 'danger to life' warning for KZN
"More generally, we have found that climate change is increasing flood risk along the South African east coast. There are reasons for this. The warmer we make the atmosphere, the more water vapour it can hold. So that's a commonly established fact in climate science.
"Secondly, east of Durban we of course have [the] Agulhas current, this current has been warming up over the last four decades, and the warmer we make the current and the surrounding ocean, the more evaporation we have into the atmosphere."
ALSO READ: Strong winds, rough seas trigger fresh alerts for KZN
The study also found that climate change is shifting wind patterns along the KZN coast, with stronger southeasterly winds pushing more moisture inland.
" In some cases, [it’s] also [moving] into the northern part of the Eastern Cape. That's a deadly mixture. So, when you have this warm and moist air coming in from the ocean and we have a big storm system forming this storm system can now cause much more rainfall than it was able to cause, say 30 or 40 years ago."
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