Zimbabwe’s Meteorological Services Department (MSD) said Monday it would start cloud seeding early next month following drought forecast.
The MSD has forecast normal to below normal rainfall for Zimbabwe during the 2015/16 season with a high likelihood of a late start to the rainy season across the country.
MSD director Amos Makarau was quoted by New Ziana news agency as saying that government had released 200,000 dollars of the half a million dollars required for cloud seeding.
“Because of the forecast that we are envisaging, we have since said we want to make sure that we seed every cloud that has potential to produce rain,” Makarau said.
He said they wanted to seed clouds as early as November unlike in the past when they started from December onwards in order to produce more rainfall from the seeded clouds.
He said the tender for cloud seeding aircraft has been sent out, adding that two aircraft will be required.
“So by end of October we should be having the companies that have been awarded the tender to do the cloud seeding, and then preparations will be made for the seeding to take place,” he said.
The department used to have two cloud seeding aircraft some years back, one based in Harare to cover the northern provinces and another based in Bulawayo to cover southern provinces.
Zimbabwe has experienced unreliable weather patterns in recent years characterized by drought and floods owing to climate change and has resorted to carrying out cloud seeding but the program has often suffered from lack of adequate funds.
The poor rainfall patterns have impacted negatively on the country’s food security situation, resulting in many people suffering food shortages.
This year, the country suffered a 40 percent decline in maize production and will need to import 700,000 tonnes of the staple to avert shortages.
According to the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, an estimated 1.5 million rural Zimbabweans or 16 percent of the rural population have been left food insecure due to low grain production in the 2014/15 farming season.
The World Food Program has announced that it will provide food aid to 856,000 people facing hunger in Zimbabwe in the nine months to March next year. Enditem
Source: Xinhua
