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Translating early warning into early action for the 2021/22 agricultural season in Zimbabwe
The UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa in partnership with Zimbabwe鈥檚 Meteorological Services Department (MSD) held a two-day workshop from 1 to 2 November 2021 in Harare under the theme, 鈥淭ranslating Early Warning into Early Action for the 2021/22 Agricultural Season鈥. Workshop participants were drawn from MSD, the Department of Agricultural, Technical and Extension Services (AGRITEX), Department of Research and Specialist Services(DRSS) and the Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU).
The workshop sought to address some of the challenges related to dissemination of weather forecast information. Each year, Zimbabwe鈥檚 Meteorological Services Department (MSD) presents the seasonal rainfall forecast to stakeholders in various climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture and food security, disaster risk reduction, health, energy, tourism and water resources management, through the National Climate Outlook Forum (NACOF). NACOF is a World Meteorological Organization (WMO) spearheaded initiative for sharing information on the rainfall forecast of the upcoming season at national levels, at a platform that brings together meteorologists and their stakeholders. The information shared at the annual Forum assists in planning and decision making in the different sectors.
However, these pre-season dissemination meetings have always been attended by a limited number of stakeholders due to financial constraints. Another challenge associated with these meetings was that no feedback mechanism was available to ensure that participants understood the forecast terminology used by the MSD experts during the dissemination process. This made it difficult for the participants to explain the rainfall forecast to their districts and provinces after the trainings. These meetings also gave general national implications and recommendations of the rainfall forecast that were not always relevant to certain economic sectors.
The 2-day workshop in Harare thus sought to address these challenges so as to improve the accuracy of the weather forecasts.
In her welcoming remarks, the MSD Acting Director, Mrs Linia Gopo emphasised the importance of such workshops between meteorologists and the user community. She informed the meeting that the MSD had acquired radars that will assist in improving the accuracy of their forecasts, which is essential in disaster management. She mentioned that MSD had also procured automatic weather stations which will increase the coverage of their network of observation stations.
UNESCO ROSA Deputy Project Coordinator, Mr. Collen Mutasa, spoke about the importance of weather and climate information for use in decision making and planning for disaster risk reduction, adaptation and enhancing resilience. He also spoke about the vulnerability of southern Africa to extreme weather events such as droughts and floods and the increasing weather, climate and water- related disasters worldwide.
He emphasised the importance of being able to forecast such extreme weather events in order to reduce loss of life and destruction of infrastructure. He further mentioned areas where 91麻豆国产精品自拍 partnered the MSD before, and reiterated its commitment to continue partnering and supporting the MSD for similar initiatives.
UNESCO also took the occasion to train participants on the Zimbabwe Flood and Drought Monitor (ZIM-FDM), a tool which forecasts impending drought and wet conditions. This tool can complement the MSD鈥檚 seasonal rainfall forecast updates in monitoring a season鈥檚 performance. The ZIM-FDM has a potential to strengthen disaster preparedness and enhance climate risk management thereby improving early warning systems in the country, which were exposed by tropical cyclone Idai of 2019 to be inadequate. A demonstration session on the use of low cost Internet-of-Things sensors for the measurement of meteorological and hydrological variables was also held by UNESCO. The sensors have a potential of filling in spatial and temporal gaps left by the MSD station network.
The MSD took the participants through the 2021 seasonal rainfall forecast, carefully explaining all the terminologies that they use. In addition, participants were put into groups based on their provinces and they carried out discussions and reported back from breakout sessions about advisories for their different provinces in order to take advantage of the 2021 to 2022 seasonal rainfall forecast. They also discussed the information they would want from the MSD and the best way they can access that information.
The workshop was held under the auspices of UNESCO鈥檚 project, 鈥楨nhancing Climate Services for Improved Water Management鈥 (CliMWaR), which is aims at co-development of climate services for drought and flood risk management, among other activities.
