The scorching wildfires in Los Angeles this week highlight that everybody — including Hollywood stars — is affected by the climate crisis, which escalates the intensity and frequency of extreme events. The World Meteorological Organisation revealed on Friday that 2024 was the hottest year on record, based on six international data sets.
Twee Riviere in the Eastern Cape was the hottest place in the world on December 11, soaring to 45.9°C, and four of the five hottest places on Christmas Day were in South Africa, the South African Weather Service (Saws) reported.
Taking SA’s temperature
Climatology professor Francois Engelbrecht, head of the Global Change Institute at Wits University, said South Africa can likely expect normal to above-normal rainfall this summer. The formation of La Niña — a climate pattern with cooler sea temperature surfaces in the Pacific Ocean — typically brings more rain to the region.
This week parts of Limpopo and Pretoria West flooded, after warnings of disruptive rain. But the Mpumalanga highveld and parts of Limpopo benefited from good rains and dams filled, said Saws forecaster Celeste Fourie.
Two patterns to look out for are extremely hot days, especially in the Northern Cape and North West, and more disruptive rainfall days
— Peter Johnston, UCT applied climatologist
Higher rainfall and temperatures were expected this year, she said. “However, the many cloudy and rainy days expected over the summer rainfall area could temper the high maximums.”
Engelbrecht said: “In general La Niña is good for Southern Africa, especially after the terribly dry 2023/2024 summer we have had. Globally this will probably help 2025 to be a cooler year than 2024, but the current La Niña is not a normal one; it formed late in December and it is weak. Climate change is making the climate more variable.”
UCT applied climatologist Peter Johnston said South Africa's rainfall had been highly variable over the last two years, with periods of intense rainfall. “Two patterns to look out for are extremely hot days, especially in the Northern Cape and North West, and more disruptive rainfall days.”
Storms, fire & drought last summer
The eastern edge of Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal are vulnerable to the outlying areas of tropical storms, he said. In the summer of 23/24, severe weather occurred almost daily in December, with the worst storms in the final 10 days across the central, southern and eastern parts of the country, according to Saws.
Last January, the Western Cape experienced frequent major fires during sweltering, dry and windy conditions. Working on Fire’s world-class firefighters responded to 2,530 fires across South Africa in 2024 — up from 1,742 in 2022 and 2,194 in 2023 — said MD Trevor Abrahams. The area burnt, however, fell sharply from 1.96-million hectares in 2022 to 744,000 last year.
Mpumalanga and Limpopo suffered severe thunderstorms and hail damage last February, while in mid-March the extreme southern lowveld and northeastern KwaZulu-Natal were hit by the severe tropical storm Filipo and rainfall exceeding 100mm.
Johnston said the winter rainfall area of the Western Cape has had a series of normal years, after its Day Zero scare early in 2018. “Last year there were two months well above normal but in 2023 we had only four major rainfall events during the winter making up much of the total.”
The Western Cape dams are now at 87%, a similar level to a year ago. Before the recent downpours, the Vaal dam level had dropped to 25%, said Engelbrecht. From September 2023 to September 2024, the dam level dropped 40% as a consequence of the summer drought.
Crippling Southern African drought
Southern Africa suffered one of its worst droughts on record last summer, leaving 30-million people in need of food aid as crops withered and wildlife was culled to alleviate hunger, Engelbrecht said. During the drought from January to April 2024, Zimbabwe and Zambia lost 70% of their maize crop and Malawi suffered heavy losses.
Engelbrecht said the El Niño weather pattern — experienced that summer — almost always brings drought, but “climate change worsened the drought”.
“Climate change made the rainfall total even lower than it was supposed to be and the heatwaves much more intense and of longer duration,” he said. Northern Botswana, southern Zambia and eastern Namibia recorded their driest February or March in the past 100 years.
Climate change made the rainfall total even lower than it was supposed to be and the heatwaves much more intense and of longer duration
— Francois Engelbrecht, Wits climatology professor
The unprecedented drought had devastating effects on economies, people and wildlife, Engelbrecht said. When the Kariba Dam dropped to a record low of 4% for the first time since it was completed in 1956, the scarcity of water disrupted Zambia’s hydroelectric power supply and small businesses were crippled by the blackouts.
South Africa escaped the brunt of the El Niño, said Johnston, but the 2024 maize crop was well below normal because of dry conditions. Late-onset rain, heavy rainfall and climate variability caused problems for farmers and crops.
The rapid swings between intensely wet and dangerously dry weather, known as “hydroclimate whiplash”, is a key connection to the Los Angeles fires, said climate scientist Daniel Swain of the University of California LA, in new research released on Friday.
The peer-reviewed paper, published in Nature Reviews, finds that “hydroclimate whiplash” is increasing globally and accelerating due to climate change.
‘Hydroclimate whiplash’ & need for adaptation
South Africa needed to prepare vulnerable areas against extreme rainfall and flooding to be more resilient, said Johnston, and cities and provinces were planning for adaptation. “We need to look at areas like settlements, river banks and coastal areas, which are the most vulnerable and do something to protect them.”
Working with communities on early warning systems is critical, said Johnston, who has seen the success of this approach while working in Madagascar. “Early evacuation has positive consequences and communities have to buy in,” he said.
African Wildlife Foundation senior manager of the youth leadership programme, Simangele Msweli-Ratsoana, has seen the cascading harm to communities during disasters such as the floods that killed some 300 people in Kenya last April.
“The schools had to be closed for weeks, which affected education and the flooding affected the food security of children,” said the conservationist, who is based in Kenya but works across the continent.
“But the youth are not sitting idly by throughout the continent. Youth-led organisations are born every day. Some are operating more at an international level in policy and some do national actions or projects in their own country,” she said, mentioning the South African Youth Biodiversity Network.
Governments need the support of communities and individuals to counter the risks of climate change. Residents can help protect their homes from wildfires by removing invasive alien trees, which act like firebombs in wildfires, or by reducing their water consumption to prevent the next Day Zero.
“Even if we cut all our carbon emissions this year, our exposure to extreme weather is going to increase and we need to adapt and be more resilient,” Johnston said.
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