Thousands of people have been hospitalised due to the growing heat wave in West Africa —one of the worst climate crises in living memory, and according to a report released on Thursday, the change was linked to a fossil fuel-driven climate change.
Towards the ending of March and early April, several West African countries experienced days and nights of extreme heat above 40°C.
The temperatures spiked so high in Mali and Burkina Faso that they equated it to a once in 200-year event, according to the report on the Sahel region by World Weather Attribution (WWA).
The gravity of the heatwave led WWA’s team of climate scientists to conduct a rapid analysis, which determined that the temperatures would not have peaked like that if the industrial era had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and other activities.
“In a pre-industrial climate, we wouldn’t expect to see heat waves at this intensity at all,” a WWA statistician, Clair Barnes had informed Reuters reporters.
There is insufficient data at the moment, but WWA estimates that there were hundreds or possibly thousands of heat-related deaths that have gone unreported in this year alone.
They have warned that such extreme heat will become much more common without increased global efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions.
Given the looming threat, the group recommends that countries plan heat action plans that would warn citizens when extreme temperatures are approaching and offer guidance on how to prevent overheating.
