The oppressive heat that has persisted in parts of South Africa over the past few weeks is neither unusual for this time of year, nor during El Niño. However, climate change is making heatwaves more frequent and severe, and making the impact of El Niño more intense.
Since the beginning of March, there have been heatwaves on most days over the central to northeastern interior of the country, according to the SA Weather Service .that the heatwaves began in February and the highest temperatures were recorded at the weekend, when multiple highest maximum temperature records were broken in towns across the northeastern interior.
The Welkom station in Free State, in operation for 49 years, reached 38°C on Sunday, shattering the record set in 2007.Johnston said that SA generally gets very high temperatures in February and the first two weeks of March. People cool down under public showers on the Camps Bay beachfront at sunset after a hot day in Cape Town, South Africa, 16 January 2016.
In terms of SA, Kruger said that February temperatures were above normal in the central and eastern parts of SA, about 1°C above the 1991-2020 average and about 2°C above the 1981-2010 average. The hottest month in history was the culmination of the hottest 12 months ever recorded — between March 2023 and February 2024 the average temperature was 1.56°C above the pre-industrial average.However, we haven’t reached that threshold yet. GCI’s Engelbrecht — who was one of the many international scientists who assessed thousands of peer-reviewed studies to compile the 2018 IPCC report — explained that although the 1.