Climate change is posing an increasing threat to global socioeconomic development and environmental sustainability. Developing countries with low adaptive capacity and high vulnerability to the phenomenon are disproportionately affected. The effects of these climatic changes have made already existing challenges with water security, food security and economic growth even more difficult.
Kenya, particularly its arid and semi-arid lands, is experiencing more frequent and prolonged droughts. The story of climate change in Kenya isn't a distant, abstract concept.
“Kenya is highly exposed to many natural hazards, the most common being floods and droughts. It is estimated that over 70% of natural disasters in Kenya are attributable to extreme climatic events,” the World Bank writes. “Droughts have affected more people and had the greatest economic impact (8% of GDP every five years). In particular, these droughts severely impact farming communities who rely on livestock, leading to widespread animal deaths and food insecurity. Conversely, climate change is also contributing to more intense rainfall and flooding in certain areas. In the fertile Tana River basin, farmers have seen their fields submerged by unprecedented floods. These floods leave behind a trail of devastation: waterlogged farms, damaged infrastructure, and outbreaks of waterborne diseases.
Harvests and agricultural production which account for about 33% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are also at risk. Hot and dry conditions in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) make droughts or flooding brought on by extreme weather changes even more dangerous.
The agriculture sector makes up about 28% of Kenya’s GDP and is responsible for more than 65% of exports. Food insecurity is on the rise, as crop yields decline and livestock perish. Climate change is exacerbating water scarcity across the African nation. As most of the coast is low-lying, sea level rise in combination with extreme weather events like flooding could inundate entire communities.
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Climate change challenges and Technology solutions in Kenya
Causes of the Heat Wave
Recent research published in Nature has found that the frequency and intensity of heat waves throughout Africa have increased significantly since the end of the 20th century. But the steep upward trend in temperatures on the continent is due not only to increases in the emissions that warm the climate. As greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide, have been increasing, efforts to clean up energy supplies have led to a decrease in coal burning in many areas, including Africa.
While reductions in coal burning substantially reduce how much carbon dioxide is emitted to warm the climate in the long term, they also reduce the emissions of sulfates that reflect some heat away from the Earth in the short term. As sunlight warms the Earth’s surface, the planet sends some of this energy back to space. Carbon dioxide, methane and even water vapor in the atmosphere hold some of that heat in like a blanket-the more of those greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the warmer the blanket.
The sulfate emissions dampened local warming in Africa during the middle of the 20th century, Vishal Bobde, a third-year Ph.D. student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago and one of the study co-authors, said. Before the 1980s, cooling aerosols and warming greenhouse gas emissions “were compensating each other,” he said. In Western countries with longer legacies of industrialization, such as the United States and Great Britain, air quality regulations, coupled with increasing dependence on gasoline, reduced sulfate emissions as early as the 1970s, bringing localized warming to those regions before it was detected in Africa.
To test this hypothesis, Bobde and his co-authors used a combination of climate model assessments and observations to determine how heat waves have changed throughout Africa since 1950. They specifically examined the changes in daytime maximum temperatures, nighttime minimum temperatures and 24-hour maximum temperatures during the three warmest months of the year across every region in Africa, comparing the 30-year period from 1950 to 1979 with that from 1985 to 2014.
Climate model simulations allowed them to distinguish between human and natural drivers of warming, said Kayode Ayegbusi, a PhD student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago and study co-author. From 1950 to 1979, sulfate emissions reduced extreme temperatures almost everywhere in Africa, shaving half a day off of heat waves and making them one degree Celsius cooler. But in the 30 years spanning the turn of the millennium, sulfate aerosols had a muted impact on heat waves that was completely overwhelmed by warming driven by greenhouse gas emissions.
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Human activities increases the strength of greenhouse effect which contributes to climate change.
The winds that pass over Kenya from December to February every year are from the north. They blow mainly through continental areas, including some deserts. These winds flow in waves and periodically bring hot weather, the kind that has prevailed recently across east Africa.
The temperatures that are prevailing in Kenya are also dictated by the path that the winds take from the north. If the path is straight (over land mass), then we end up with these high temperatures that we have experienced in the early months of 2024. If the winds follow a path that curves into the Indian Ocean, then the temperatures get moderated, resulting in cooler weather and rainfall in Kenya and other parts of east Africa.
Also, because of climate change, average global temperatures are rising. The temperatures last year were the highest on record. So the relatively high temperatures that we normally experience during this season (December-January-February) may be considerably higher.
Another thing to note is that the December to February season is always a dry season in Kenya, but December and January of 2024 were wet because of the late el Niño rains. The el Niño phenomenon is normally experienced in this region within the September-October-November season. The temperatures which were supposed to be high in December and January were therefore moderated by those rains. So, when the rains ceased, the usual heat suddenly set in, making February feel very hot.
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Kenya and its eastern African neighbours have all experienced the hot weather. The region is now moving towards the March-April-May season when the rainfall belt comes back around the equator and the sun will be overhead. The rainfall is expected to moderate the high temperatures.
Impacts of the Heat Wave
Such increases in the duration and temperatures of periods of extreme heat can be deadly, as heat stroke and dehydration also increase in the exposed populations. Extreme temperatures can also have secondary-but still devastating- health impacts, he added. Prolonged high temperatures can increase the risk of crop failure, and even bring the risk of vector-borne illnesses, such as malaria, into regions previously unaffected by the diseases, like South Africa and Mozambique.
High temperatures are also expected to increase pest and disease loads in domesticated animals, especially in arid and semi-arid (ASALs) regions. Livestock trends in ASALs between 1977 and 2016 show cattle declined by 26.5%, while sheep and goats increase by 76% and camels by 13.3%.
Among people aged 65 and over, heat stress-related mortality is expected to increase from 2 deaths per 100,000 per year in 1990 to 45 per 100,000 by 2080. Under a low-emissions scenario, this may be limited to just 7 deaths per 100,000 in 2080. Under a high emission scenario, climate change is expected to exacerbate diarrhea deaths, causing around 9% of such deaths for children under 15 by 2030, and 13% of such deaths by 2050. Malnutrition may rise by up to 20% by 2050.
In urban areas, increasing population and informal settlement size is exposing more people to heat, flooding, and water scarcity.
Increasing drought and desertification is expected to cause an increased scarcity of freshwater. While international standards suggest that 1,000 m3 of water should be available per person, only 586 m3 was available in 2010, and this may fall to 293 m3 by 2050. The shrinking of Mount Kenya's glaciers has exacerbated water shortages.
It could lead to heat stroke and chronic conditions such kidney disease, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
In February, West Africa was hit by an unusually intense humid heatwave with temperatures not normally seen until March or April. The most severe heat occured from February 11-15 with temperatures above 40°C. In Nigeria, doctors reported an increase in patients presenting for heat-related illness, people complained of poor sleep due to hot nights and the national meteorological agency issued several warnings about the heat.In Ghana, the national meteorological agency also warned people to prepare for dangerous temperatures.
Observed Temperature Trends
“While temperatures vary across Kenya, a distinct warming trend is evident, particularly since the 1960s, with inland areas registering larger increases in minimum and maximum temperatures,” according to the World Bank. “During this time the annual mean increase has risen by approximately 1.0°C, at an estimated average rate of 0.21°C per decade.
The annual temperature for Africa has been increasing at an average rate of 0.13°C per decade since 1910, but this has more than doubled to 0.28°C since 1981. The normal minimum temperatures and the maximum temperatures are rising.
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies
Despite these challenges, Kenya is not passive in the face of climate change. The government has implemented national climate change action plans, focusing on adaptation and mitigation. The current National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP 2018-2022) follows the National Climate Change Action Plan 2013-2017.
The climate crisis is a significant threat to Kenya, impacting its environment, economy, and society. Despite these challenges, Kenya is not passive in the face of climate change. The government has implemented national climate change action plans, focusing on adaptation and mitigation.
Half of Kenya's electricity is produced through hydropower because the generation and distribution of electricity is unreliable, some manufacturing firms generate supplemental power with fossil fuel sources.
Forest cover 7.4 percent of Kenya's land, and provide services including improving water quality, preventing erosion, and absorbing greenhouse gases, in addition to being habitats for other wildlife. This reduces both the ecosystem services the forests provide, including by diminishing wood yield and quality, and the biodiversity they support. Climate change may impede the recovery of these forests. It adversely affects forest regenerative capacity, limiting tree growth and survival, as well as increasing pest and pathogen range.
To reduce delayed health consequences, governments need to proactively and explicitly tell people “to take precautions, not go outside, not exercise, drink a lot of water, avoid alcohol, just stay in cool places,” Pinto said. But leaders can only do that if they can accurately predict the severity of a heat wave, which is not currently possible in many African countries.
Developing heat action plans will help protect vulnerable people from dangerous heatwaves in West Africa, according to the researchers (which includes researches from the Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre).
Countries across Africa, and the world, need to prepare for heat. Simple measures like awareness campaigns and warning systems can save thousands of lives during heatwaves.”Due to the hot and humid conditions, additional ‘cooling breaks’ were taken during the matches so players could rehydrate.
Ultimately, the story of climate change in Kenya is a story of human resilience and vulnerability.
Here are some ways to reduce heat exposure:
- Ensure you cover your windows with shades. If you can, apply reflectors on them.
- Keep drinking cool water to avoid dehydration. This also keeps your skin supple and reduces the risk of wrinkling.
- Try to avoid high-energy activities in the midday sun. If you can’t avoid it, wear light clothing, ensure your head is covered from the sun, and apply sunscreen.
The ground and concrete buildings absorb the heat and retain it. This makes it difficult for heat to escape until the cooler night air inducts the heat. As a result, people experience heat waves during the day and at night.
The country is also at risk of drought. There has also been an increased uptake in water consumption and heat-related health crises.
The new research and the growing body of literature it adds to can help governments prepare for the coming increases in heat stress, said Kimutai, who did not contribute to the study.
Continental-scale, on-the-ground observations, such as those from weather monitoring stations, are not nearly as common in Africa as they are in parts of North America and Europe. And these stations are often unevenly distributed and concentrated in “better-to-do economies within the African region,” Bobde said.
When there’s a dearth of continuous, evenly distributed ground observations, climate scientists and meteorologists are increasingly defaulting to reanalysis products. These data products, which are fundamentally model outputs corrected with whatever available real-world observations exist, can fill in gaps to make continental-scale studies possible.
Kenya, like the rest of Africa is warming.
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