A new study has shown that the frequency of thunderstorms in some fast-growing African coastal cities has doubled over the past 30 years, many of which are related to the impact of deforestation on the region’s climate.
In Africa and South-East Asia, large areas of coastal tropical forest are being destroyed as global climate change has had an impact on communities and drainage.
This is even as infrastructures are often ill-equipped to cope with major flooding.
The study which was led by the United Kingdom Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), showed that more frequent storm activity in coastal areas is a second, previously unrecognised, way in which deforestation can increase flooding.
It examined Southern West Africa, a coastal region where deforestation has been ongoing since 1900 within a 300-km coastal belt and analysed three decades of satellite data from southern West Africa to see how meteorological patterns changed because of deforestation through changes in heating and humidity of the atmosphere.
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According to the study, there are two rainy seasons (March-June and September-November) along the south coast of southern West Africa (March-June and September-November), with a little dry season in July and August.
The little dry season coincides with the peak of the West African monsoon, which brings heavy rain further north in West Africa.
The researchers found that the removal of large areas of woodland greatly exacerbated the effects of global warming in the coastal areas of the region, which includes Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria.
They found that while in deforested areas, the frequency of storms has doubled since 1991, the increase in forested areas has been around 40 per cent.
