SANF23 no 20 – by Neto Nengomasha
Climate experts from southern Africa are expected to meet at the end of September to produce a consensus forecast for the 2023/24 rainfall season.
The 27th Southern Africa Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF 27) made up of regional weather and climate experts, is to be held in hybrid format in Mauritius from 26-28 September 2023.
Key stakeholders invited to attend the meeting are the regional climate forecast experts from the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in southern Africa, climate scientists from universities, and research institutions.
Regional and international governments, non-governmental organizations and development partners will also participate.
The regional forum is preceded by a climate experts meeting from 18 – 25 September which aims to build capacity of climate experts from NMHSs in member states of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC).
SARCOF 27 will run under the theme of “The Future of Climate and Water Across Generations of the SADC Region”, drawn from the theme of the World Meteorological Day 2023 which is “The Future of Weather, Climate, and Water Across Generations”.
SARCOF looks mostly at the climate and its implications and impacts, and more emphasis will be put on climate variability of the upcoming season and its implications for water.
This can cause flooding or drought events that have adverse impacts on sectors such as agriculture (crop and livestock), health, energy and disaster risk among others.
In the previous agricultural season, climate experts had predicted good rainfall to occur over much of SADC, however, in late February and early March, the region was hit by Tropical Cyclone Freddy which brought heavy rains, flooding, and strong winds to Madagascar, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, with varying impacts on crops, according to the Southern Africa – Integrated Food Security Analysis Report of April 2023.
The regional climate outlook forum is coming at a time when global climate models already indicated a high likelihood of an El Niño phenomenon occurring in southern Africa over the 2023/24 agricultural season.
This is a cyclic weather pattern that results from the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) system, a naturally occurring phenomenon that involves fluctuating ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.
El Niño is a term for the warming phase of the ENSO, while the cooling phase, which has global climate impacts opposite to those of El Niño, is referred to as La Niña.
El Niño and La Niña can make extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and storms more likely, as they influence temperature and rainfall patterns.
During most El Niño episodes, drought conditions usually prevail over most of southern Africa while La Niña often results in wet conditions with a high risk of floods occurring in the region.
An analysis of El Niño cyclic events between 1950 and the present shows that they are increasing in intensity. The impacts of these cyclic weather patterns are made worse by changing global climate.
Irrespective of El Niño events, there is a long-term trend towards the warming of the Earth’s climate because of rising, heat-trapping, greenhouse gas emissions from human and industrial activities.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports already indicate that the climate change impacts continue to intensify and the world is already certain to face further climate disruptions for decades, if not centuries to come.
For instance, the sixth IPCC report of 2021 states that it is no longer debatable that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900, a marked shift from previous IPCC reports, which had said it was “extremely likely” that industrial activity was to blame.
The report finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.
It states that global warming is now irreversible, and warming can only be slowed down by drastically reducing carbon dioxide emission in the next decade.
While the regional rainfall outlook is yet to be released, SADC Member States have started to work on strategies to mitigate the severe impacts of El Niño weather that may occur in the region.
For example, the National Disaster Management Institute (INGD) in Mozambique reported that the country is working on strategies to mitigate the effects of the El Nino climate phenomenon, which is expected to cause severe drought in southern Mozambique.
“The INGD has decided to position itself on the ground to anticipate risky phenomena. The information available indicates that the coming period could be characterized by severe and prolonged droughts, compromising agricultural production, a situation that could undermine food and nutritional security in the most vulnerable areas,” said Luísa Meque the President of INGD.
Other strategies being proposed across the SADC region to reduce the expected impact of insufficient rainfall include cloud seeding, water harvesting and expanding crops under irrigation. sardc.net
