🇿🇦South Africa

South Africa spans multiple climate zones: Mediterranean conditions in the southwestern Cape with winter rainfall, subtropical climates in KwaZulu-Natal with summer monsoons, semi-arid Karoo plateaus, temperate Highveld elevations, and the arid Kalahari fringe. Mean annual temperatures have risen approximately 1.5°C since 1940, with accelerating warming in interior regions and coastal heatwave intensification driven by both Atlantic and Indian Ocean warming patterns.

The major 2015–2018 Cape Town Day Zero drought brought a large city closer to running out of water than any modern metropolis, forcing residents to 50 litres per day and exposing extreme vulnerability to multi-year rainfall deficits. The April 2022 KwaZulu-Natal floods killed over 450 people, destroyed critical infrastructure, and demonstrated how intense rainfall systems can overwhelm drainage capacity in rapidly urbanizing coastal zones. The June 2017 Knysna fires destroyed thousands of structures along the Garden Route. A reported temperature of 50.0°C at Vredendal in January 2019 marks a potential record heatwave temperature.

Our archive covers 75 South African cities with daily ERA5 reanalysis data going back to 1940. The warmest July averages occur in Phalaborwa, around 24.5°C, while Ermelo records the coldest January nights near 13.7°C. Comparing the last decade against the 1940–1970 baseline, mean temperatures across these cities have risen by about 1.2°C.