{"id":424610,"date":"2026-02-04T11:43:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T10:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=424610"},"modified":"2026-02-04T11:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T10:43:10","slug":"no-al-jazeera-climate-change-hasnt-altered-african-flood-and-drought-patterns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=424610","title":{"rendered":"No, Al-Jazeera, Climate Change Hasn\u2019t Altered African Flood and Drought Patterns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Physical<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Climate Realism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Anthony Watts<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Headline<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Al Jazeera (AJ) recently published an article titled \u201cDrought in the east, floods in the south: Africa battered by climate change<\/a>\u201d by Haru Mutasa, in which the reporter details recent experiences of drought in East Africa and flooding in southern Africa, asserting that those weather events are proof that climate change is battering the continent. This is false. The article relies on flimsy content such as personal observation, interviews, and evocative imagery to imply causation, ignoring data and trends that show no appreciable changes in flood or drought patterns over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mutasa asserts that \u201crising seas and intensifying storms\u201d and shifting rainfall patterns are already devastating livelihoods, citing the author\u2019s personal field observations as evidence of a broader climate crisis. Readers are shown photos of dry riverbeds, dead livestock, submerged neighborhoods, and distressed residents, then invited to connect these scenes directly to global warming. The emotional impact is real, but emotion is not evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let us start with AJ\u2019s most basic error: weather is not climate<\/a>. Climate is defined by long-term patterns measured over decades, typically 30 years or more. A drought in one region followed by floods in another over a few weeks or months says nothing about a durable climate trend. Africa\u2019s climate has always been highly variable, with sharp swings driven by ocean\u2013atmosphere cycles such as the El Ni\u00f1o\u2013Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Short-term extremes\u2014sometimes back-to-back\u2014are a known feature of the region, not a recently discovered diagnostical proof of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historical record bears this out. Southern and eastern Africa experienced severe droughts and catastrophic floods long before modern greenhouse gas emissions rose. Mozambique\u2019s Limpopo River basin, featured prominently in the article\u2019s flood imagery. The area has a long history of major inundations, including the devastating 2000 Mozambique floods,<\/a> which displaced hundreds of thousands and occurred during a strong El Ni\u00f1o year. East Africa\u2019s Horn has likewise seen repeated, multi-year droughts throughout the twentieth century, interspersed with episodes of extreme rainfall. These precedents matter because they show that today\u2019s events are consistent with a long pattern of variability rather than proving a novel climate regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, science has shown a 50-year seasonal variability<\/a> across centuries in East African droughts and floods recorded in lake sediments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When measured data are consulted instead of anecdotes, the alarm bells fade. Climate at a Glance<\/em> summarizes the global evidence in \u201cFloods\u201d<\/a> and \u201cDrought,\u201d<\/a> explaining that there is low confidence in any increasing trend of global flood frequency or magnitude and that drought trends are regionally mixed, not universally worsening. These conclusions align with the cautious language used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6)<\/a>, which emphasizes uncertainty and regional variability rather than blanket claims of intensification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AJ article substitutes interviews for analysis. Quoting local residents and aid workers about hardship may document suffering, but it does not diagnose cause. Infrastructure deficits, land-use changes, deforestation, river management, dam releases upstream, population growth in floodplains, and limited early-warning systems all play decisive roles in disaster outcomes across Africa. Climate Realism<\/em> has repeatedly shown how media coverage overlooks these factors while attributing complex events to climate change by default, as catalogued in its Africa-related reporting and extreme-weather analyses accessible via Climate Realism\u2019s<\/a><\/em> search on floods and droughts<\/a>and Climate Realism\u2019s <\/a><\/em>coverage of drought claims<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even within the article\u2019s narrative, local management issues loom large. Mutasa notes dam releases in South Africa\u2019s Mpumalanga province sent additional water downstream into Mozambique\u2014an operational decision with immediate hydrological consequences that has nothing to do with global temperature or climate change. Treating such factors as footnotes while elevating climate change as the primary driver of flooding misinforms readers about where real risk reduction lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Serious climate reporting distinguishes between events and trends, and between personal experiences and measured evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By presenting interviews and moment-in-time scenes as confirmation of a continent-wide climate verdict, Al Jazeera is misleading its audience by making a causal connection where data show none. Africa\u2019s vulnerability to climate and weather extremes is real, but the causes are multifaceted and long-standing. Ignoring historical precedents and measured trends in favor of an alarming narrative certainty does not inform the public; it misleads it with false headlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Political<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Al Jazeera (AJ) recently published an article titled \u201cDrought in the east, floods in the south: Africa battered by climate change\u201d by Haru Mutasa, in which the reporter details recent experiences of drought in East Africa and flooding in southern Africa, asserting that those weather events are proof that climate change is battering the continent. This is false. The article relies on flimsy content such as personal observation, interviews, and evocative imagery to imply causation, ignoring data and trends that show no appreciable changes in flood or drought patterns over time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":424619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"Explore how Al Jazeera's claims about Africa's climate disasters overlook historical patterns and scientific data. Get the facts.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Debunking Climate Change Myths: Africa's Weather Patterns","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvY2xpbWF0ZS1zY2llbmNlLnByZXNzXC93cC1jb250ZW50XC91cGxvYWRzXC8yMDI2XC8wMlwvMFNjcmVlbnNob3QtMjAyNi0wMi0wNC0xMTM2NTItMTAyNHg5NDUucG5nIiwidHh0IjoiTm8sIEFsLUphemVlcmEsIENsaW1hdGUgQ2hhbmdlIEhhc25cdTIwMTl0IEFsdGVyZWQgQWZyaWNhbiBGbG9vZCBhbmQgRHJvdWdodCBQYXR0ZXJucyIsInRlbXBsYXRlIjoiaGlnaHdheSIsImZvbnQiOiIiLCJibG9nX2lkIjoxNTU4MTI0NDl9.FGBljJ8_4NVGC0ovQZEuGZKn8oyllkfH9X7aU3B2w6gMQ"},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691841188,691818056,691819743,691819348,691841190,691841191,691818544,691841189,691841192,691828307],"class_list":{"0":"post-424610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-al-jazeera-aj","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-climate-propaganda","11":"tag-drought","12":"tag-east-africa","13":"tag-el-nino-southern-oscillation-2","14":"tag-flooding","15":"tag-haru-mutasa","16":"tag-indian-ocean-dipole","17":"tag-southern-africa","19":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/0Screenshot-2026-02-04-113652.png?fit=1101%2C1016&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1Msy","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":416672,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=416672","url_meta":{"origin":424610,"position":0},"title":"Wrong, Financial Times, the Arab Region Faces No Climate Emergency","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"09\/12\/2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent (paywalled) Financial Times (FT) article, \u201c\u2018Too hot to handle\u2019: climate change pushing Arab region to limits, says WMO,\u201d claims that the Arab region is being simultaneously hammered both by increasing heatwaves, droughts, and paradoxically, more flooding, and extreme rainfall, all due to human use of fossil fuels. 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