South Africa Declares a National State of Emergency after Deadly Rains

Extreme rainfall is consistent with what we expect from climate change – a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture and so often increases the intensity of rainfall.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment report said there is an observed and projected increase in heavy precipitation and pluvial flooding in East Southern Africa.

However, many other factors also combined to make this such a devastating event.

The South African Weather Service said the heavy rainfall was triggered by a cut-off low system. This was enhanced by the presence of sustained low-level maritime air which has been fed in from the southern Indian ocean, thus driving the system to produce more rainfall.

Moreover, the original source of the maritime air was from warmer, sub-tropical parts of the ocean, with a greater capacity to transport moisture, an essential ingredient of any rain-producing system.

Overnight rainfall reports from KwaZulu-Natal have underscored the particularly heavy and extreme nature of the rainfall, with some 24-hour falls exceeding 200 mm or even 300 mm.

Such rainfall is of the order of values normally associated with tropical cyclones; however  this system was not tropical in nature, nor is it a tropical cyclone

“Whilst impact-based warnings were indeed issued in a timely manner by the South African Weather Service (SAWS), it appears that the exceptionally heavy rainfall overnight and this morning exceeded even the expectations of the southern African meteorological community at large,” the weather service said in a statement.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined government leaders in sending his  condolences. The UN chief has tasked WMO with presenting an action plan by November to ensure that within the next five years, everyone on Earth should be protected by early warning systems against increasingly extreme weather and climate change.

*SOURCE: WMO. Go to ORIGINAL. 2022 Human Wrongs Watch