Flooding caused more than 800 deaths this summer in Nigeria, Niger and Chad. Climate-changing pollution made the severe seasonal rains that fed them, around Lake Chad, 80 times more likely and 20% worse than they might have been before the world industrialized, according to World Weather Attribution, a scientific group that analyzes extreme weather for traces of climate change.
Warming also doubled the likelihood of short, intense bouts of rain in the Niger River basin (another contributor to the disaster), with a 5% increase in intensity over the pre-industrial era. The 1.2C of warming the planet has experienced so far has already made such rainfall more likely, the WWA researchers wrote. Future warming is expected to increase intensity further, but at a lesser rate than it has for the last three decades.
