The traditional rainfall forecast issued by SADC’s Southern Africa Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF) around this time of year, is likely to be delayed this year, but local experts aren’t waiting. The Department of Meteorological Services plans to issue its own country forecast by the end of the month and there appears to be some sense of urgency to the matter.
All available datasets suggest that El Niño, the climate phenomenon hated and dreaded in equal parts in Botswana and the region, is set to rear its ugly head this season, since the mayhem it caused in 2015–2016.
For farmers, El Niño plays havoc with their planning, their livelihoods, their finances, and their savings. For households, El Niño means higher food prices and for those families dependent on the fields either for nutrition or income, disaster. For government, El Niño means hundreds of millions of pula in supporting the rural economy, vulnerable and underprivileged groups, greater spending on cereal imports, and the waste of the other hundreds of millions spent on agricultural input programmes such as ISPAAD [Integrated Support Programme for Arable Agriculture Development].
Many clearly remember the troubles El Niño caused in 2015–2016, with Gaborone Dam drying up and a water crisis gripping the capital, forcing residents to spend every waking moment scurrying about looking for the scarce running taps in neighbours’ homes. The country was blighted by a series of heatwaves, each one longer and more ferocious than the other, while temperatures reached historic highs of up to 45º Celsius in some parts of the country.
Department of Meteorological Services principal meteorologist, John Stegling, is quick to point out that the seasonal forecast has not been finalised. However, he also explains that all indicators are that El Niño is already active in the skies above and will only intensify throughout the rainy season, which traditionally lasts until March.
“We are preparing the forecast as we speak and SARCOF is going to be late, but we cannot wait for them,” he told Mmegi.
“There’s a very high chance of El Niño returning and for us, it’s more than 95%.
“It was there around 2015–2016 when we had those record temperatures and then we went into a period called ENSO neutral, then into La Niña for three years.
“It’s actually rather rare that we had La Niña for three years running because it usually lasts one or two years.”
In this part of the world, La Niña is associated with healthy rain seasons, but due to the intensifying effects of climate change, even this rosier period has not been without grief for local farmers. In fact, in the last two years, government declared a moderate drought in 2021–2022 and a severe drought in the recent 2022–2023 season.
While farmers and their families use all manner of adjectives to describe the changing weather patterns that have shifted seasons, introduced the terrible mid-season dry spell in January, and eroded their livelihoods, the Met Services Department speaks in more technical terms.
“There have been forecasts done by others indicating a strong El Niño this season, which means more than 1.5 percent above normal, but you should note that a strong El Niño doesn’t necessarily mean strong impacts for us,” Stegling explained.
“Similarly, a weak El Niño can have strong impacts.
“However, when we have El Niño, we expect higher than normal temperatures and droughts.
“We have to prepare the forecast and look at other factors that influence how the season will go, such as the winds, number of tropical cyclones coming through the Mozambique channel and others.”
He added: “Early indications are that we are going towards a drier phase, but we have to consider other factors before we come up with a forecast and that will done by the end of the month.”
Farmers around the country are not only eagerly watching out for the forecast from Stegling and his technocrats, but they are hoping the Met Services Department has been able to upgrade its technology between the last El Niño in 2015–2016 and now.
The department previously relied on statistical models in its forecasting but has expressed its plans to move to dynamic analysis that would better forecast the onset of rains and allow farmers to finetune their plans. Earlier forecasting of threats such as heatwaves and flooding and even the ability to accurately gauge the distribution of rainfall within a small area would help farmers better plan mitigations.
According to Stegling, much has been improved since the last El Niño event, particularly around boosting the department’s observational network or its network of weather stations and similar equipment around the country.
“Lately we have been forecasting cold spells very accurately and that’s due to the new technology and latest equipment that we have introduced.
“We have to keep training people and also keep up to date with the latest technology.
“With the size of the country that we have, we need a good observational network and it’s still sparse; the more information we get from this network, the better we are.
“However, we have improved the network since 2016 and a lot of the stations are automated with live data.
“We have improved but we cannot say we are there.”
The department expects to call farmers to a rainfall forecast briefing before the end of the month, where it will deliver its final assessment of what to expect between October and March 2024.
Farmers, battered by yet another disastrous year on the fields, will be looking up to the skies, not for rain, but for divine intervention.
