Polski
Not a month goes by without climate change making its brutal mark on the lives of communities in different parts of the world. In early April, Africa’s Sahel region was hit by heat waves of unprecedented intensity. In Mali and Burkina Faso, the situation is most tragic – people are dying, and it is difficult for local authorities to even estimate the scale of the phenomenon. There is talk of hundreds or even thousands of victims. The hot weather is also affecting other regions.
Heat waves in West Africa
Already in late March, unusually high temperatures were observed in the Sahel region. In the first days of April, thermometers in Burkina Faso indicated 45°C, and in Mali even 48.5°C. Minimum daily temperatures were over 30°C. A heat wave reaching above 40°C also swept through Senegal, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria and Chad. In these countries, temperatures were 1.5°C higher than the average for April. According to international experts, this is an obvious impact of global climate change, while the weakening El Niño is already responsible for only 0.2°C of this year’s anomaly. Burkina Faso’s National Meteorological Agency forecasts a continuation of the heat wave, with maximum temperatures in Ouagadougou expected to reach 41-43°C by the end of the week. Similar forecasts were made by the MALI-METEO Meteorological Agency.
Why are people dying of heat in Africa?
In Mali’s capital, Bamako, 102 people died in the intensive care unit from April 1 to 4, more than half of them over the age of 60. In comparison, for the entire month of April last year, 130 deaths were reported there. According to representatives of the World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international group of scientists studying climate change, it is difficult to know precisely how many casualties have really been claimed by this year’s hot weather in the Sahel region. They are believed to be hundreds or even thousands dead. The main causes of death are dehydration and heatstroke.
How is it possible that weather anomalies are giving so much trouble to Africans accustomed to heat? Analysts explain that the current heat wave is not only severe, but also very long. The recorded five-day maxima are rated as a rarity on the scale of 200 years. To make matters worse, they fall during Ramadan, when Muslims traditionally fast and are more exhausted. The situation is not improved by increasingly prolonged power outages resulting from the debt restructuring program of Mali’s state-owned electricity company EDM.
In Bamako and Ouagadougou itself, people are also dying because of poorly developed infrastructure. Rapid urbanization has been associated with a drastic reduction in green spaces, and concrete cities have become heat-accumulating islands. Meanwhile, sectors such as energy, water management and health care leave much to be desired.
Offshore heat waves in New Zealand
Africa is not the only place where spring has brought unexpectedly high temperatures. The European agency Copernicus reported that March was the tenth consecutive hottest month on record. The Earth’s average temperature was 14.14°C, 0.73°C higher than the 1991-2020 average.
Researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand have published a study confirming a continuous and unprecedented rise in temperatures in the Hauraki Gulf region in the north of the country. Analysis of data from 1967-2023 showed that since 2012. The number of days characterized as marine heat waves (MHV) has increased significantly. We’re talking about a situation where the water temperature for at least five days in a row is warmer than the 90th percentile of the average local temperature over the past 30 years. Such waves are usually long-lasting and affect large areas of the water surface, affecting various ecosystems. In 2022. In New Zealand, they were recorded for a record 313 days!
Marine heat waves are increasingly observed in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and are associated with the mass extinction of many fish and coral species and the forced migration of huge populations. In New Zealand, due to MHV, a proliferation of sea urchins of the species Centrostephanus rodgersii has been observed wreaking havoc on the seabed, displacing native seaweed species. The precious marine sponges, when exposed to high temperatures, change their consistency, peel off from the rocks and die. The losses in terms of biological diversity are already unquantifiable, and next years are expected to be… even warmer!
