'Human-induced' climate change sparked deadly heatwave in West Africa: Study

According to a research by the World Weather Attribution (WWA), released on Thursday (April 18), "human-induced" climate change caused the heatwave that swept over Africa's Sahel area in early April and claimed multiple lives.

Human-induced heatwave

From April 1 to April 5, the West African countries of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced a heatwave that resulted in several deaths due to temperatures over 45 degrees Celsius.

Researchers at the WWA found that "heatwaves with the magnitude observed in March and April 2024 in the region would have been impossible to occur without the global warming of 1.2C to date" and connected this finding to "human-induced climate change" based on observations and climate models.

“Even minimum temperatures, overnight, remained relatively high, making it so that people did not get a break from the heat,” the study added.

Once-in-a-200-year event

According to the paper, the Sahel experiences high temperatures frequently during this time of year, but the heatwave in April would have been 1.4C colder "if humans had not warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels". Although the five days of intense heat were a once-in-a-200-year happening, "these trends will continue with future warming".

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Even though the people of the two nations were accustomed to high temperatures, the duration and intensity of the heat caused a rise in hospital admissions and casualties, according to the WWA.

A lack of data in the affected countries made it impossible to know the exact number of deaths, the WWA said, adding there were likely hundreds, if not thousands, of other heat-related casualties. Countries in the Sahel region have had to contend with drought since the 1970s, as well as periods of intense rainfall from the 1990s.