The World Weather Attribution (WWA) network said on Wednesday that human-driven climate change, caused by the use of fossil fuels, had made seasonal downpours across the Niger and Lake Chad basins 5-20 percent worse this year, unleashing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Floods killed about 1,500 people and displaced more than one million in West and Central Africa this year, according to UN aid agency OCHA. The rains also overwhelmed dams in Nigeria and Sudan.
Such downpours “could happen every year” if global temperatures increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, warned WWA. It forecasts that this could happen as early as the 2050s.
“This is only going to keep getting worse if we keep burning fossil fuels,” said Clair Barnes from the Centre for Environmental Policy.