| dc.description.abstract | Tanzania as many other countries in Africa depends on rain water for
various economic activities in order to achieve its development. The global
climate change has not isolated Tanzania, the rainfall climatology of the country
has some changes which need to be taken into account while planning for
economic activities such as hydro power generation, civil and structural
engineering, mining, Agriculture which is the back-borne of the country as it is the
main source of employment, foreign currency and revenue.
This study aims at aims examining the rainfall characteristics over
Tanzania in order to determine the climate change signals in rainfall
characteristics in particular.
The daily, monthly and seasonal rainfall datasets from all the eleven
zones in Tanzania covering a period of 48 years from 1961 to 2008 were used.
Tanzania meteorological agency is the source of data used.
Arithmetic method was used to estimate the missing data for Loliondo the
only station which had missing data. The single line mass curve method was
used to test homogeneity of the data for the stations selected to represent each
of the eleven zones, results from the mass curve showed all the data from all the
seven zones were homogeneous. During analysis, time series and trend
methods were used. The eleven zones used in this research project were
adopted from the ones used by the Tanzania Meteorological Agency.
This study revealed that all the zones have some changes in their rainfall
characteristics as the amounts of seasonal rainfall were found to show
decreasing trends in some stations and increasing trends in the others. The time
series for the accumulated seasonal rainfall in pentads showed delays in the
onsets and cessations while other zones were found to experience delay of
onsets and earlier cessations implying the seasons are becoming short. Rainfall
characteristics in Tanzania are changing differently in different parts over the
country.
The people in the country especially those who are stakeholders of the
meteorological services in particular rainfall must be empowered with updates in
changes of rainfall climatology. Agriculture as a long time and term back-born of
the country should be adequately performed along the current changes in the
rainfall characteristics so as to make it sustainable and profitable and therefore
avoiding the demerits which normally arise from poor harvests and hence control
for the food security | en |
