'Winters they are a-changin'

An international consortium of scientists – including Professor Michael Meadows of UCT's Department of Environmental and Geographical Science – have dug into the Western Cape's recent geological past to uncover new insights into the climatic future of the region. Their work, funded by the National Science Foundation in the US and published in May in the open-access journal Climate of the Past, used sediment cores from Verlorenvlei, an elongated former estuary at Eland's Bay along the West Coast, coupled with ice-core data from Antarctica. Their findings concurred with other studies that, as the planet warms due to build-ups of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, winter rainfall is likely to become more scarce as well.