Things could be hot during the Fifa World Cup, which kicked off with Mexico and South Africa on 11 June .
But likely not only because of the sporting action.
This year’s tournament will be spread over 16 cities across Mexico, the US and Canada, and analyses predict that many of the matches in the southern parts of the North American continent are likely to be played in uncomfortably hot conditions.
It’s in line with global weather models having forecast above-normal temperatures for April to June in the southern and central parts of the northern hemisphere – and offers a glimpse into how changing climate conditions are becoming a normal part of people’s lives.
The world has seen the 11 hottest years on record between 2015 and 2025, the World Meteorological Organisation’s latest State of the Global Climate report shows . Moreover, the average temperature for 2024 was officially the highest in more than 175 years since people started keeping track – and the first time it went 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
The planet’s near-surface air temperature breaching the “1.5°C above” barrier once doesn’t mean the Paris Agreement’s goal of keeping global warming in check by the end of the century is unattainable. But seeing it along with the trend of the past decade sends a stark warning of the level of warming that might lie ahead if we don’t seriously cut down on carbon emissions.
When Earth’s atmosphere is warmer than what it’s naturally supposed to be – as has been happening over roughly the past 100 years – global weather patterns are upset, which climate experts agree is likely to lead to intense and unpredictable extreme weather events occurring more often than before .
Analyses suggest that this is already the case. For example, a rapid attribution study – which looks for cause-and-effect relationships in the aftermath of an event – shows that the heavy rainfall that led to destructive floods in southern Mozambique and the far north of South Africa in January would have been very rare in a world without human-caused global warming at the levels we’re seeing today.
With more and more findings like this when it comes to heavy storms, excessive rainfall, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires seen over the past few years, it’s not surprising that decision-makers across the world rank extreme weather as the biggest threat facing humanity in the next 10 years.
In the second instalment of our three-part series on what South Africa’s climate future might look like, we showed that weather patterns could change in different ways across the country’s five climate zones in a warming world. But what does this mean for people’s lives – and plans to stay well – when heavy weather hits?
This was the question we wanted to unpack in today’s story. So we dived into census data to get an idea of how the way people live could add pressure to systems for keeping healthy and safe, and put together a summary graphic for each of the five climate regions in the country .
It’s a thought experiment for which we made a number of assumptions to get a sense of how health service delivery could be affected. For example, we used the District Health Barometer of 2022/23 to count the number of public health facilities in the districts that make up a specific climate zone (we counted a total of 3,811 across the country) and looked at the most recent census data (2022) to get population figures and sizes of areas to do our sums. We realise that people also have access to private health facilities, but seeing that 85% of the population rely on public healthcare , we reasoned that it’s a fair starting point for our experiment.
We also looked at what the census data said about where people live and what their houses look like, and whether they have access to sanitation services like flush toilets and piped water. We realise that our analysis might be a very simple way of looking at things, but we just wanted a departure point for comparing regions that will likely have to deal with different pressures.
To refresh your memory of how climate zones and provinces link, keep this map in mind:
Region 1 is the far north of the country, and covers all of Limpopo and small parts of North West and Mpumalanga.
Region 2 spans the eastern interior and coast, covering the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in full, most of Mpumalanga, and large parts of the Eastern Cape, the Free State and North West.
Region 3 is the central interior of South Africa, covering the western part of the Free State, North West and the Eastern Cape, and the bordering part of the Northern Cape.
Region 4 covers the northern and western parts of the Northern Cape.
Region 5 spans the Western Cape and southern part of the Northern Cape.
Region 1: The hot summer-rainfall area in the northern parts of South Africa
Climate region 1 in the far north of South Africa is home to about 14% of the country’s population, with most people living in rural areas where land is shared and communities ar…
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