Rainfall decrease by 5 per cent, TMA report

What you need to know:

  • According to the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA), mean monthly rainfall between 2012 and 2016 was 78.8mm, lower than 83.3mm recorded during 1981-2010.

Dar es Salaam. The effects of climate change is starting to be experienced in Tanzania following the decrease of monthly total rainfall between 2012-2016 when compared with monthly long term mean rainfall during 1981-2010.

 

According to the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA), mean monthly rainfall between 2012 and 2016 was 78.8mm, lower than 83.3mm recorded during 1981-2010.

 

This was a decrease of 4.5 mm which is about 5  per cent as compared to the long term mean (1981-2010).

 

“This gives an indication that monthly rainfalls are declining in most parts of the country,” says a report which is published on newly released National Environmental Statistics Report 2017 by National Bureau of Statistics.

 

According to the report, for the period of 2012 to 2016, Tanzania received annual rainfall of 893.9 mm recorded from different meteorological stations.

 

The highest rainfall rate between 2012 and 2016 was experienced in 2014 whereby the mean monthly rainfall was 87.0mm followed by 2015 with 80.8mm.

 

Monthly total rainfall refers to total amount of rainfall accumulated over a period of one month and Long term mean (LTM) rainfall is the mean value of monthly total rainfall over the period of 30 years (1981 – 2010).

 

For the period of 30 years (1981 - 2010) the highest mean monthly total rainfall was 160.9 mm, which was recorded in March and the overall period mean was 83.3 mm.

 

On the other hand, the period of five years from 2012 to 2016 Tanzania received, on average of 78.8 mm rainfall per month with the maximum observed in April, which accumulated to 172.9 mm.