{"id":321141,"date":"2024-04-23T17:01:55","date_gmt":"2024-04-23T15:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=321141"},"modified":"2024-04-23T17:01:57","modified_gmt":"2024-04-23T15:01:57","slug":"drought-in-southern-africa-officially-not-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=321141","title":{"rendered":"Drought in Southern Africa \u2014 Officially NOT Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Dried maize corn plants grow in a drought affected field operated by farmer Ryan Matthews in Lichtenburg, North West Province of South Africa, on Friday, March 20, 2015. The worst drought since 1992 in South Africa, the continent’s biggest corn producer and traditional supplier of its neighbors, has damaged plants, with the nation predicting a 32 percent drop in the 2015 harvest to the smallest in eight years. Photographer: Waldo Swiegers\/Bloomberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

News Brief by Kip Hansen \u2014 21 April 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southern Africa has had very low precipitation over the last few months \u2013 which is the end of their summer.   November through March, are the rainy season bringing 75% of the precipitation for the year, but even then, compared to elsewhere, they are dry-ish.  As happened last year, when it does rain, it floods<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe rains this year began late and were lower than average. In February, when crops need it most, parts of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Angola, Mozambique and Botswana received a fifth of the typical rainfall.That\u2019s devastating for these largely agrarian countries, where farmers rely entirely on the rains\u201d.  [ source<\/a> ]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year before was particularly wet, leaving vast areas of mud still sticky, in some cases leading to free ranging cattle to get stuck in the mud seeking water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This type of meteorological drought<\/a>, simply less, or lack of, precipitation is particularly hard on subsistence farmers<\/a> who depend on rain-fed crops for their livelihoods and to feed their animals and their families. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story originates with the UN\u2019s World Food Programme<\/a> and from OXFAM<\/a>.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caveat:<\/u><\/strong>  OXFAM is terrific at raising money and public awareness of human suffering in many parts of the word, but it is an advocacy organization prone to exaggeration to achieve its ends. The linked article f<\/a>r<\/a>om OXFAM<\/a> makes the claim:  \u201cSince October 2022, the cholera outbreak \u2013 which experts attribute to climate change<\/strong> \u2013   has killed more than 3,000 people and affected over 130,000 in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi.\u201d  <\/em>Climate Change does not<\/u> cause cholera<\/strong>.  According to the CDC<\/a>:  \u201cMost cases [of cholera] continue to occur in resource-limited settings that have unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, and inadequate hygiene. The African continent has the highest case fatality rates. About 1.3 billion people are at risk of cholera in countries where local transmission occurs.  \u2026.  Global Cholera Challenges:  <\/strong>Large population migrations into urban centers in developing countries are straining existing water and sanitation infrastructure and increasing disease risk. Epidemics are a marker for poverty and lack of basic sanitation<\/u>.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no surprise that southern African nations are experiencing yet another drought \u2013 a brief check of news stories for hunger, famine, drought, and flooding in southern Africa return far too many results to be counted.  Each of those adverse weather and social conditions are the norm not the exception.  The actual causes are also far too many to list but conflict, lack of development, less stable governance, and increasing populations without increasing affluence drive vulnerability to weather variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The highlight of this story is the report<\/a>  [.pdf] from the so-called World Weather Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/strong>  (WWA) group that operates out of the Imperial College London<\/a>.  WWA states its purpose is to \u201cTo encourage actions that will make communities and countries more resilient to future extreme weather events, WWA studies also evaluate how existing vulnerability worsened the impacts of the extreme weather event.\u201d <\/em> In short, their job is to show that weather is caused by climate change, but only bad<\/em> weather<\/strong>. Good weather is natural variability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an astonishing turn of events, and much to the dismay and disappointment of the team assigned to evaluate the drought and impending famine in southern Africa, they were unable to blame climate change for this disaster.  Even worse, they had to admit that climate change made the drought less likely.  Some excerpts from the report titled:  \u201dEl Ni\u00f1o key driver of drought in highly vulnerable Southern African countries<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n