Normal November weather in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, is pleasant and warm with a chance of epic thunderstorms. The sun will be shining in the morning, and then boom the sky opens up and a stiff wind begins to blow and it’s probably best if you’re inside.
At 10 a.m. on an 85-degree Thursday this November, Mozambique’s lead weather forecaster, Acacio Tembe, was stooped at a computer at the National Institute of Meteorology, trying to figure out whether a storm was in the cards that afternoon. He toggled between tabs with global weather maps put out by the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan. On every map, clouds and bands of rain moved in a lazy loop across Mozambique and neighboring South Africa.
Mozambique is one of many countries around the world where weather forecasting is lagging behind even as climate change drives more extreme and variable weather. In Bangladesh, tropical storm warnings are not adequately reliable. In Peru, the national government is trying to get weather and climate information to residents who are experiencing more extreme weather. The World Meteorological Organization is working on upgrading flash flood warning systems in more than 50 countries around the world, including Mozambique.
Mozambique’s meteorologists currently rely heavily on weather data and models collected and created by, and primary tailored to, the needs of other countries.
In coastal communities on the country’s long Indian Ocean coast, sea level rise and more intense tropical storms are making life both more dangerous and uncertain. For the more than 3 million families that farm in Mozambique, longer dry stretches can mean fewer crops and dead livestock.
In order to adapt, residents need more accurate information, both about the local weather on any given day and about how weather patterns are changing. Both will require better weather and climate forecasting capability.
2019 npr