Increased understanding helps communities prepare for extreme weather events

Climate change is affecting South Africans by significantly altering local weather patterns through higher temperatures, as well as the occurrence of extreme weather events. In fact, its impact in recent years has been so great that the government is planning to launch a national Climate Change Response Fund, which is intended to help pay for infrastructure to make South Africa more climate-resilient in the future.

This thinking reminds us of the importance of weather forecasting, both in the short term as well as over longer timeframes.

“While the planet’s climate has changed continually over the last 800,000 years through natural cycles and fluctuations, scientists have shown that human activity is driving our present spike in above normal temperatures globally,” says Vox Weather Meteorologist, Annette Botha.

“In particular, the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas, has led to the ‘greenhouse’ effect, which is metaphorically and literally causing our planet to burn.”

In this article, we discuss how the science of weather forecasting can provide a greater understanding of climate change, and thus help countries and communities around the world to be better prepared against the possibility of extreme weather events – as well as realising the critical importance of continuing the fight to reduce ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions.

Putting Climate Change Under the National SA Spotlight

As outlined previously, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the implementation of the national Climate Change Response Fund (CCRF) during the February 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA). The CCRF is intended to be a collaborative effort between the government and the private sector to fight against the increasingly devastating impacts of the climate crisis.

During his announcement, President Ramaphosa noted the occurrence of devastating wildfires in the Western Cape, destructive floods in KwaZulu-Natal, intense heat waves in the Northern Cape, a persistent drought in the Eastern Cape and intense storms in Gauteng.

“While individual events like floods or fires cannot be solely attributed to climate change,” says Botha, “we are observing a broader trend: a steady increase in global temperatures and a rise in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Climate is naturally variable, but human-driven warming is clearly shifting the baseline, making such events more likely and often more severe.”

Extreme Weather Events: Cause and Effects

Global warming has come about because of the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases – including water vapour, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorocarbons – that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere and so cause a rise in global average temperatures.

Botha notes: “Because warmer air can hold more moisture, climate change results in more intense rainfall. As a result, because rainfall is increasing on average across the world, the chances of flooding are getting higher. On the other hand, climate warming also increases evaporation on land, which can worsen drought and create conditions more prone to wildfires. Added to this, the Earth’s warmer and moister atmosphere, together with warmer oceans, can create stronger hurricanes.

“Rising sea levels, which are partly caused by melting ice in the poles, increase the amount of seawater that is pushed onto shore during coastal storms, resulting in more destructive storm surges and flooding. The net result is that global warming is leading to more extreme weather events, and we have seen all of these climate change results in South Africa over the past few years.”

Lives are obviously at stake in the event of severe weather conditions if information isn’t available for warning purposes.

Botha notes: “Early warnings give people time to prepare against severe weather events like floods, tornadoes and lightning storms, whether that’s evacuating, securing property or staying indoors. Without timely updates, communities are left vulnerable, increasing the risk of damage, injuries and even loss of life.

“However, climate change is impacting on weather forecasting by altering weather patterns and increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme events, making long-term predictions more challenging.”

This is where technology comes in, to further back up the science of weather forecasting.

The Science and Technology of Weather Forecasting

Botha clarifies: “While short-term weather forecasts remain accurate, climate change introduces uncertainties in long-range predictions, due to shifts in climate variables like sea surface temperature and atmospheric circulation patterns. Scientists are developing new modelling techniques and tools to improve the accuracy of these long-term predictions.

“Meteorologists pull data from multiple sources including satellites, radars, weather stations and even high-altitude weather balloons. We also use global weather models and international meteorological databases. In South Africa, the South African Weather Service (SAWS) is a key provider of local weather data.”

Around the globe, high-performance computing (HPC) is crucial for weather forecasting today because it enables the efficient processing of vast amounts of data and complex mathematical models, leading to more accurate and timely predictions. HPC involves the use of multiple supercomputers to process complex and large calculations. This technology provides sufficient computational resources to improve the accuracy of short-term weather forecast systems models, with the aim of further reducing the severity of weather and climate related natural disasters.

Linking People Through Technology

With climate change bringing more frequent and extreme weather events, platforms like Vox Weather are becoming even more important, says Botha.

“As South Africa’s first independent digital weather platform, Vox Weather delivers real-time, hyperlocal forecasts via social media and our website. We make weather updates engaging and accessible, and with close to 500,000 followers, we’re reaching more people than ever.

“We look forward to continuing to add information on climate change to our daily short-term broadcasts, as well as continuing to update our followers on the perils of climate change, and the ways in which both countries and individuals can play their role in helping to reduce greenhouse gases, in order to reduce global warming – for our future, and that of future generations,” she concludes.

Communication is vital in spreading the message

One of the many impacts of climate change, according to the United Nations (UN), is the harm it causes to both humans and animals – something that continues to worsen as the earth heats up by even a fraction of a degree because of greenhouse gases. Raising awareness about climate change is a cause very dear to Vox Weather.

Annette Botha, Vox Weather Meteorologist, says: “It’s an established fact that climate change harms the health of living creatures through such factors as air pollution, extreme weather events like drought and flood, disease, food insecurity, forced displacement and even pressures on mental health.

“The main cause of climate change – namely the burning of coal, oil and gas – causes air pollution, which can in turn lead to respiratory diseases, strokes and heart attacks. One study has found that air pollution from fossil fuels is responsible for nearly one in every five deaths worldwide.”

Communication to continue driving awareness is a key element of combatting climate change. “This is a conversation we should all be having,” says Botha, “and it’s critical for everyone, no matter their age, to understand how humanity’s actions are affecting the health of our planet.

“The past 13 months have all exceeded the 1.5ºC threshold of global warming, marking an unprecedented streak of record-breaking temperatures. The period from July 2023 to June 2024 is now officially the warmest 12-month period on record, with global temperatures averaging 1.64ºC above pre-industrial levels.”

In this article, Vox Weather looks at climate change and how it affects everyone – and some of the actions that people can take to play their part in reducing global warming.

Unpacking the Terminology

‘Climate’ simply means the long-term statistics of weather, while ‘climate change’ refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. According to the UN and other credible sources, human activities have been the main drivers of climate change. Today, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 50% higher than in 1750, far exceeding the natural changes over at least the past 800,000 years.

Because people have been burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas at significant rates since the Industrial Revolution[1], this in turn has raised the levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, causing the earth’s surface and its oceans to heat up. If this is allowed to continue unchecked, experts say the consequences would be catastrophic.

[1] The Industrial Revolution was a period of major mechanisation and innovation that began in Great Britain during the mid-18th and early 19th centuries and later spread throughout much of the world. The British Industrial Revolution was dominated by the exploitation of coal and iron.

“We can think of global warming as being one part of climate change,” says Professor Francois Engelbrecht of the Wits Global Change Institute (GCI) in a Vox Weather interview with Annette Botha. “It’s also not wrong to think of global warming as being the cause of climate change.

“Global warming means a systematic increase in the world’s average ‘natural temperature’ at the surface of the planet, which should be around 14ºC – this was its temperature during the pre-industrial era. Over the last few decades, there has been an increase in the available energy of the planet – the ‘energy budget’ – as well as the average natural surface temperature of the planet, by 1.64ºC for the most recent 12-month period based on new data.”

The international Paris climate agreement is a global treaty that aims to significantly reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and, as a result, limit the global temperature increase to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below an increase of 1.5ºC.

A 1.5ºC increase in global temperatures will have a significant impact on the climate, but a 2ºC increase will be far worse, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). However, according to Professor Engelbrecht, recent data shows that the world has now breached the 1.5ºC mark for 13 consecutive months, emphasising the urgency of reducing emissions faster than ever.

More Energy and Water in the Atmosphere

Says Prof Engelbrecht: “The warming of the planet has been accelerating over the past few decades, and this is projected to continue for as long as we continue pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. With the warming of both the atmosphere as well as the oceans, we have more available energy in and around the planet.

“The atmosphere uses this energy to build weather systems that are more intense, for example tropical cyclones become more intense, because the more energy and heat that is available in the system, the more intense such systems can become.”

He clarifies that a warm atmosphere can also hold more water vapour to contribute to intense weather patterns: “In March 2019, southern Africa experienced the disastrous incident of killer cyclone Idai, which took place over Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. It killed over 1,000 people and left 2.6 million people in need of humanitarian assistance after the catastrophic damage caused by the strong winds and extensive flooding.”

Floods in February this year in Kwa-Zulu/Natal were declared a national disaster, following on from previous storm floods in KZN in April 2022, which led to over 400 deaths and forced Transnet to close the port of Durban. Floods in Gauteng in early March underscored this principle that global warming is leading to more extreme weather events, with the potential of more moisture and energy in the weather systems as they unfold.

How Can Individuals Help to Reduce Global Warming?

“While the biggest causes of global warming happen at the industrial level, sanctioned by the governments that rule countries around the world, there are still things that we can do as individuals to play our part in trying to reduce our energy consumption,” says Botha.

The ideas below are endorsed by the United Nations.

Save energy at home: You can use less energy by reducing your heating and cooling use, switching to LED light bulbs and energy-efficient electric appliances, washing your laundry with cold water, or hanging things to dry instead of using a tumble dryer.
Reduce, reuse, repair and recycle: Electronics, clothes, plastics and other consumer items cause carbon emissions at each point in the production cycle. Every kilogram of textiles produced generates about 17 kilograms of CO2 emissions. You can consciously plan to buy fewer things, shop second-hand, and repair what you can and in this way reduce your carbon footprint.
Eat more vegetables: Eating more plant-based food, and less meat and dairy, can significantly lower your environmental impact, because producing plant-based foods requires less energy, land and water, and generally results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
Throw away less food: When food rots in a landfill, it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. To avoid this, try to use what you buy and compost any leftovers. Cutting your food waste can reduce your carbon footprint by up to 300 kilograms of CO2 emissions per year.

Spreading the Word on Climate Change

Botha says the ideas presented are all relatively easy for households to slot into their lives.

“We would encourage people to play their part in small lifestyle changes that could add up to significant outcomes in reducing individual global warming levels,” she notes, “and if everyone plays their part, small efforts can all add up to larger results that could make a difference. At the same time, it’s obviously critically important that these efforts also take place at national and global levels also.

“At Vox Weather, we endorse the replacement of fossil fuel-based power plants with renewable energy like wind or solar farms wherever possible, or at least its addition into the available energy sources. Wind turbines and solar panels don’t release emissions that pollute the air or cause global warming.

“Vox weather is passionate about spreading the word so that by increasing awareness, people will be inspired at both the individual and enterprise levels to play their part in trying to curb the current levels of climate change and global warming. In this way, we will protect our precious planet for the future – not just for individuals who are alive today, but also for our children’s children to come,” she concludes.

If you would like to watch the full interview with Professor Francois Engelbrecht and Annette Botha, please click here.

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