Namibia Africa’s Weather Unusually Wet – May be Tied to Climate Change / Global Warming

Normally an arid desert region of the African continent, Namibia’s weather this year is just the opposite. Scientists Kyle Nichols of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and Paul Bierman of the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT. are trying to understand why the country is currently literally flowing with water.

According to a release from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Nichols and Bierman, who have been studying the region for over 10 years, are reporting that the rivers in Namibia, including the Swakop and Omaruru and Kuiseb flowed all the way to the sea.

Not only is this a rare occurrence which typically only happens, “maybe once a decade,” according to Bierman, but the rivers flowed in this fashion for weeks on end. The water is the result of unprecedented rainfall in the area. “There’s nothing like this widespread, heavy rain in the historic record,” says Nichols.

“There was so much water,” says Bierman, “that people went swimming, they went tubing, and the desert turned green around rivers carrying so much sediment they were chocolate-brown.”

According to the NSF report, areas which should be barren desert are now covered in grass, and although the rains ended several months ago, the groundwater table is so high that there is still flow in some streams and rivers.

It is not clear if global warming and climate change has caused the recent rains and flooding in Namibia, but scientists are leaning in that direction. “This could all be coincidence, but it’s hard not to think that something’s up with the weather,” says Bierman. “A warming Earth equals a more intense hydrologic cycle, with repercussions for erosion rates, sediment redistribution and landscape evolution.”