Much of South Africa has been battered by relentless rainfall and flooding since the start of the year.

Listen to this article 10 min Listen to this article 10 min 'I have lived here for 19 years and I've never seen anything like this before," said Jessica Babich, an environmental anthropologist who lives in the Waterberg Biosphere in Limpopo, speaking about the extreme rainfall and flooding that hit her community in mid-February.

"Attempts to get off our farm resulted in our car being stuck for five days... We carried groceries for over five kilometres on foot just to have something," said Babich.

"We couldn't get our son to school today because the road has been washed away. Community bridges have been destroyed. Everybody is affected. It is an absolute disaster zone."

Like the Waterberg district, many other regions of South Africa have been battered by relentless rainfall and flooding since the start of the year.

While it's too soon to attribute this to climate change, what has been proven is that climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that extreme daily precipitation events will intensify by about 7% for each 1°C of global warming

The World Weather Attribution group concluded that human-induced...