Increasing risk of another Cape Town "Day Zero" drought in the 21st century.

ABSTRACT: Three consecutive dry winters (2015-2017) in southwestern South Africa (SSA) resulted in the Cape Town "Day Zero" drought in early 2018. The contribution of anthropogenic global warming to this prolonged rainfall deficit has previously been evaluated through observations and climate models. However, model adequacy and insufficient horizontal resolution make it difficult to precisely quantify the changing likelihood of extreme droughts, given the small regional scale. Here, we use a high-resolution large ensemble to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to the probability of occurrence of multiyear SSA rainfall deficits in past and future decades. We find that anthropogenic climate change increased the likelihood of the 2015-2017 rainfall deficit by a factor of five to s

SUBMITTER: Pascale S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7703628 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature