The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events in South Africa also came under scrutiny, such as the ‘Day Zero’ drought in Cape Town, the persistent drought and subsequent flooding in the Eastern Cape, the devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal, the Knysna and Table Mountain fires, and numerous heat waves.

Noteworthy highlights included the seasonal pattern of the Intertropical Convergence Zone and its influence on thunderstorms, forecasting of solar irradiance, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections, various scenarios of changes in the westerly winds south of Africa, synoptic atmospheric circulation over Gauteng and air quality observations from some case studies. These highlighted the interesting and exciting work being conducted in the research community.

A panel discussion on impressions from the annual World Climate Research Programme Open Science Conference by South African attendees underscored the importance of source appropriation and attribution statements of climate impacts of extreme events. Very limited air quality-related science was presented.

The importance of the Global South as a community contributing to the climate discussion was noted. A concern that was highlighted is that, going forward, it will be key for South Africa’s atmospheric science community to keep pace with technological trends such as HPC capacity, machine learning developments and equation discovery.

A fuller report from this panel is available here.