Southern Africa has been plagued by heatwave after heatwave, and the temperature is still on the rise.
Climate change has been an issue many people sweep under the rug, but this past Summer, everyone felt its effects in the scorching temperatures that left no reprieve. With the degrees consistently sitting in the high 30s, Johannesburg was at risk of a health and ecological disaster.
Professor Jennifer Fitchett was the speaker at the first-quarter session of the Pro Vice-Chancellor Seminar Series for climate, sustainability and inequality. She is a professor of physical geography at Wits University and centred her presentation around the effects of a 1.1-degree Celsius warmer climate.
In fact, Fitchett says Johannesburg is 1.5-degree Celsius warmer, above the global average.
The seminar aimed to indicate how humans are unable to tangibly feel this gradual temperature rise of the planet, with most saying the difference seems negligible to note.
However, other species which use season changes as their thermometer most definitely feel this increase; so, when humans eventually feel the temperature rise, these species would feel the effects even more intensely.
Fitchett explains how bees are coming to pollinate flowers before they have bloomed; caterpillars are hatching before leaves are ready for them; Jacaranda trees are flowering earlier than usual; land-based Addo elephants are unable to migrate to areas necessary for survival; waterholes dry up and land-mammals cannot survive; and the woolly-mammoth was forced to eat a diet of grass which led to their extinction.
Ecologies are experiencing an imbalance of nature, with co-dependent species having mismatched timelines which are fatal. Slowly, they have evolved to align with each other once again, but the temperature is still rising faster than the rate of evolution.
Fitchett says the solution to climate change lies within an interdisciplinary approach. She explained social scientists should note the impact of higher temperatures — no matter whether they are due to global warming or the climate-phenomenon of an El Niño year — because they can easily cause a health disaster in vulnerable South African communities.
She also said environmental students should have a compulsory climate course in their first year to create awareness of this growing issue. Journalists also need to fact-check their climate articles to ensure they are not over-dramatising the issue for effect which leads to the public losing trust in climate specialists.
Joburg gave a new meaning to the idealised Sunny South Africa, and was sizzling, stifling, and scorching hot this summer season. If humans could feel this temperature increase, other plants, animals, vegetation, or species would have felt it, and been affected by it, even more.
FEATURED IMAGE: A setting sun seen over the skyline of Johannesburg, burning in colours of red, orange, and yellow. Photo: Victoria Hill
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