When will unusual heat waves become normal in a warming Africa?

In the upcoming decades, the occurrence of longer, hotter and more frequent heat waves in Africa could have a strong impact on human mortality and crop production. In this publication, the authors explain and demonstrate the method they have used to quantify the magnitude and spatial extent of the most extreme heat waves between 1979 and 2015.

Results show that in recent years, Africa experienced hotter, longer and more extent heat waves than in the last two decades of the 20th century. Given that adaptation and resilience measures presently undertaken in most African countries are already reaching their limits under current climate, the projected increase in extreme heat waves in the coming decades can result in humanitarian crises of unknown dimensions.This calls for ambitious global mitigation action and sustainable solutions for local adaptation.

Environmental Research Letters, Voulme 11, Number 5, May 2016. This paper is published under a Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC By 4.0)