Coupled climate–land-use interactions modulate projected heatwave intensification across Africa

Africa faces intensifying heatwave hazards with far-reaching impacts on health, agriculture, and economic stability. Here, we assess changes in heatwave attributes, including duration, frequency, timing, and intensity, across nine African regions using 10 global numerical climate model simulations, with a multivariate bias-correction method applied to the model output. Under a high-end emissions scenario (SSP585), an upper limit projection, Western South Africa is projected to experience more than a 12-fold increase in heatwave duration and frequency. We apply Shapley Additive Explanations, an explainable artificial intelligence technique, to quantify how environmental drivers shape these changes, revealing…