THERE have been changes in weather patterns and extreme conditions never before experienced are becoming common, leading in some instances to disasters.
Floods, earthquakes and cyclones, all over the world, have become a common occurrence and claim thousands of lives as well as destroying property worth billions of dollars
Most of these disasters are occurring in places that do not have disaster preparedness mechanisms in place and hit when least expected, resulting in interventions being difficult.
The recently experienced Tokwe-Mukorsi disaster and the floods in Tsholotsho were least expected and exposed the weaknesses in our response apparatus.
Assistance was largely left to the goodwill of the corporate sector and individuals.
While warnings are issued through constant weather updates from the Meteorological Services Department (MSD) and other institutions, it seems people do not take them seriously and will only believe when disaster strikes.
The changes in weather patterns have been attributed to a host of things, among them, deforestation and gas emissions, which developing countries contribute minimally to.
What is commonly being experienced is the rise in temperatures during the summers while the winters have been charecterised by very low temperatures and in some cases changes in agro-ecological zones.
Speaking to The Patriot on the change in weather patterns, agro-meteorologist and forecaster from the MSD, John Mupuro said, the current weather patterns show extreme patterns that could worsen.
“What we have noticed is that we are experiencing extreme high and low temperatures both in hot and winter periods,” he said.
“The seasonal average temperatures show that temperatures have risen and that is the general trend across the country.
“The rain seasons have longer dry spells than normal and when it rains, the rainfall is devastating and heavy in most cases destroying infrastructure.”
Mupuro said the rise in temperatures could have dire consequences.
“By saying that temperatures are increasing, it means that evaporation is also increasing which is what is causing moisture stress to crops,” he said.
“Studies have shown that for every degree rise in temperature, evaporation increases sevenfold so even by a small margin of temperature rise you can be assured of increased evaporation.
“All this causes moisture stress to crops such that even when the rains come, they find the soil very dry and soil erosion increases.
“This has also seen differential heating of surfaces causing various wind thermals that may cause infrastructure destruction especially if they are strong winds.”
Ebedia Hodera another forecaster added that the changes in temperatures have resulted in the shifting of agro-ecological zones.
“These changes in temperatures have seen violent storms and lots of frosty winters because the temperatures have become extreme,” Hodera said.
“Some preliminary studies have even shown that the agro-ecological zones have changed.
“What we have seen which has not yet been published is that some regions have shrunk like regions One and Two, while regions Three, Four and Five have become bigger.
“The Met Dept and various stakeholders are currently in the process of re-defining these agro-ecological zones and availability of funds will determine when the new agro-ecological zones will be published.”
Hodera said there is much that needs to be done to ensure that weather changes do not become worse.
“What we need to do is to adapt to these changes and mitigate them,” he said.
“We need to reduce our impact on the climate by not cutting down trees, reducing gaseous emissions like methane, nitrous gases and carbon dioxide.
“While it is true that developing countries do not emit a lot of emissions, we have some activities that contribute minutely to emitting gases.
“Our agricultural activities for instance, are not climate smart because of the fertilisers we add to the soils.
“For methane the garbage that we heap produce methane.
“So we need to practise micro-dozing of fertiliders so we can become greener in our agriculture.”
For methane, calls have been made to utilise bio digesters so that methane can be used for cooking purposes.
“If people do not act now and reduce their impact on climate change then we are likely to experience and see more changes in our weather patterns or else we will push the thresholds too far to unprecedented levels,” Hodera said.
“The unfortunate thing is that what we do here triggers some extreme changes elsewhere and what happens elsewhere triggers some changes here.”
The pundits, said, responsible behaviour was critical to ensuring that we avert more disasters.