Extreme heat linked to the deaths of hundreds of people would not have happened without global...
A deadly heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel was "Impossible" without human-induced climate change, scientists say.
A separate study on drought in Southern Africa said El Niño was to blame, rather than climate change.
A number of countries in the Sahel region and across West Africa were hit by a strong heatwave that struck at the end of March and lasted into early April.
Researchers believe that global climate change had a key role in this five-day heatwave.
A new analysis from scientists involved with the World Weather Attribution group suggests the high day time and night time temperatures would not have been possible without the world's long term use of coal, oil and gas as well as other activities such as deforestation.
According to the study, climate change meant temperatures were up to 1.5C warmer than normal in Mali and Burkina Faso, and made the night even hotter at 2C above the average.
Across the region as a whole the five-day temperature was increased by 1.4C. "For some, a heatwave being 1.4 or 1.5C hotter because of climate change might not sound like a big increase," said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in Burkina Faso.
While intense heatwaves are still relatively rare in this region, researchers expect them to become more common as the climate warms.
They found that climate change did not have a significant influence on low rainfall during the December- February period across the region.
"Over the past year, attribution studies have shown that many extreme weather events have been driven by a combination of both climate change and El Niño, said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at Imperial College London."The southern Africa drought appears to be a rarer example of an event fuelled primarily by El Niño.".