A leading South African climate scientist believes a ‘Gauteng day-zero drought’ represents the biggest near-term climate change risk faced by the country, which is poised to become hotter and drier as average global temperatures rise. Francois Engelbrecht, who is a distinguished professor of Climatology at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Global Change Institute and a lead author of chapter four of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) recently released Working Group One Sixth Assessment Report, says the Southern African region has been identified as a climate-change hot spot, owing to a projected rate of temperature change that will be twice the global average.
