If the weather over the summer rainfall area of South Africa continues as it started this year it can’t be long before a full-on drought is declared.
Indeed, early predictions that southern Africa would experience a wetter-than-usual spring and early summer, followed by a drier than usual mid and late summer, appear to have been wrong.
One smallholder on the East Rand reported fewer than 140mm of rainfall since the start of the rainy season to mid December – a far cry from the 440mm recorded in the same period last season.
Debilitating heatwaves
The other part of the predictions, that temperatures would be higher than normal have, however, proved correct, as vast swathes of the country have been blanketed in debilitating heatwaves, often in quick succession.
El Nino effect
Climate change denialists will doubtless say that this year’s weather pattern extremes have nothing to do with global warming. That may be only partly true as our summer weather patterns are being influenced by an El Nino effect courtesy of the central Pacific Ocean.
This relatively-newly discovered influencer of global weather sees to in that when Pacific Ocean surface temperatures rise an average of a few degrees southern hemisphere countries in South America, Africa and Oceania experience drier, and hotter than average summers, while northern hemisphere countries face the opposite in their winters.
La Nina effect
The opposite effect, when southern hemisphere countries experience wetter than average summers, is a result of the opposite in the central Pacific, and is called a La Nina effect.
Indeed, it was as a result of a persistent La Nina that southern Africa enjoyed a couple of rainy summers over the past few years.
Devastating floods
Of course, drought conditions in a relatively large and topographically diverse country such as South Africa are by no means universal. This can be seen by the fact that while inland areas, particularly the western parts, have experienced the drier climate, coastal regions, particularly the western and southern Cape, but also parts of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal, have experienced very wet conditions, even devastating floods.
Main image: Rock and mudslides streak the mountainside of the Hemel en Aarde Valley outside Hermanus – the result of devastating torrentially-heavy rainfall earlier this year. SA Smallholder Online.