Can flood survivors’ stories make climate science better?

Floods, cyclones and drought leave anxiety, depression and lasting trauma that survey data alone struggles to capture.

Wema project scientists, who are studying how extreme forms of weather brought on by climate change affects mental health in Africa, trained 37 community members in South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique and Burkina Faso on how to build their own digital stories, transforming individual experiences into words and artwork as a form of evidence.

The community researchers then analysed those stories to set the priorities for policy and future research on the topic, in what the team says is a crucial part of the scientific process.

Here’s how they did it, and the ways it helps to fill the knowledge gap .

In today’s newsletter , Astrid Treffry-Goatley and Gill Black tells us where storytelling meets science.

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COMMENT Whenever heavy rain falls in eMbo, on the outskirts of Durban, Balungile and her children sleep with the windows open.

More than three years have passed since torrential rain caused her neighbour’s retaining wall to collapse onto their home.

The house has since been rebuilt.

The wall that collapsed has not.

“Whenever it rains, I cry,” she says.

“Because I never know what is going to happen.” Researchers measure how much rain falls during an extreme weather event and map the extent of flooding using satellite imagery.

Hospitals record deaths and injuries, while epidemiologists — scientists who study how illnesses and diseases spread among humans — estimate how many people become anxious or depressed or develop post-traumatic stress disorder , a mental health condition that can occur after someone experiences something extremely frightening or life-threatening.

Yet these measurements cannot tell us what it means to spend every rainy season waiting for another wall to fall, or why two neighbours who survived the same disaster recall it in different ways.