Study jinds link between floods and warming planet

Human-caused climate change worsened floods that have killed hundreds of people and displaced millions in Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan this year, according to a study published yesterday.

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The intense rainy season has unleashed a humanitarian crisis across large areas of the Sahel region bordering the Sahara desert.

A new analysis by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) network of scientists found warming, driven by the use of fossil fuels, had exacerbated the flooding in Sudan.

The researchers also said climate change would have made this year's torrential rains about 5%-2o% more intense across the Niger and Lake Chad basins, citing a previous WWA study of similar floods in 2022.

"This is only going to keep getting worse if we keep burning fossil fuels," said Clair Barnes from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Speaking at a briefing ahead of the study's publication, she said such downpours "could happen every year" if global temperatures increase to 2°C above pre-industrial levels.