Devastating floods that swept across Southern Africa since December 2025, killing at least 280 people and affecting almost a million, were likely intensified by the impacts of climate change, scientists say. The region’s rainy season hit hard in Mozambique, Eswatini, Madagascar, South Africa and Zimbabwe, displacing 150,000 people and destroying 105,000 hectares (nearly 260,000 acres) of farmland. Most recently, Cyclone Gezani hit Madagascar on Feb. 10, leaving dozens dead. The storm also caused deaths and damages in flood-battered Mozambique. A rapid study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international consortium of scientists and institutions that investigates the role of human-caused climate change in extreme weather events, found that a warming climate, combined with La Niña weather patterns, aggravated the extreme rains. “The most striking finding was that the rainfall accumulated over just 10 days exceeded the region’s average annual rainfall. This was unprecedented,” one of the study’s lead authors, Izidine Pinto, climatologist and researcher for weather and climate models at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, told Mongabay. He added that some weather stations recorded more than 200 millimeters (8 inches) of rain in just 24 hours. The authors noted that structural vulnerabilities in the affected areas made the climatic shocks even deadlier and more destructive. Mozambique, in particular, Pinto said, was not prepared for such heavy rainfall. The WWA scientists analyzed 10-day maximum rainfall accumulations during the rainy season in Mozambique, South Africa, Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) and Zimbabwe from December to the beginning of February. By combining this…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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