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Reconciling theory with the reality of African heatwaves

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Extreme weather damage databases report no significant heatwave impacts in sub-Saharan Africa since 1900, yet the region has experienced a number of heatwaves and will be affected disproportionately by them under climate change. Addressing this reporting discrepancy is crucial to assess the impacts of future extreme heat there.

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Fig. 1: Extreme heat during the 1991/1992 Southern Africa drought.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts for the provision of ERA5 data, which can be freely accessed via the Copernicus Climate Change Service Climate Data Store (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/home), and thank the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) for the provision of EM-DAT data, which can be freely accessed for non-commercial use via https://public.emdat.be/. The authors acknowledge support from the FORMAS project 2018-02800, entitled ‘Global Attribution Models, Mediation and Mobilisation (GAMES)’.

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  1. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Luke J. Harrington & Friederike E. L. Otto

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  1. Luke J. Harrington
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  2. Friederike E. L. Otto
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Correspondence to Luke J. Harrington.

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Harrington, L.J., Otto, F.E.L. Reconciling theory with the reality of African heatwaves. Nat. Clim. Chang. 10, 796–798 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0851-8

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