Climate Change and Variability in Southeast Zimbabwe: Scenarios and Societal Opportunities

Copyright © 2013 David Chikodzi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. A lot of researches have been done on the negative impacts and challenges caused by extreme weather conditions due to climate change and variability. Not many researches have been focused on the positive side in form of opportunities presented due to climate change. The study aimed to show the climate change scenarios and explore possible opportuni-ties that could be derived from such scenarios in the southeastern region of Zimbabwe. The research used climate data records from three Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department run weather stations in the region. The time series data were analyzed to show trends of rainfall and temperature over time. A questionnaire survey was also carried out to enquire from the farmers if they perceived climate change to have any opportunities. The rainfall trend analysis showed that rainfall amounts have declined at two of the three stations used. Rainfall total was also shown to be variable from year to year at all the stations. Ambient temperatures at all the stations were shown to have increased for both winter and summer. Opportunities that could be derived from climate change in the region were identified as the hydrological, agricultural and industrial. The research concludes that taking advantages of opportunities offered by climate change and variability provides the quickest way of embracing climate change adaptation