Why the two rainy seasons failed this year

Dejected. Farmers in their garden, look at their failed crops in Bwikonge sub-county in Burukuya parish in Bulambuli District. Photo by David Mafabi

What you need to know:

The reason. The limited rain is a result of a reversal of the warming of the Central Pacific Ocean that was expected to move the global climate from an El Nino phenomenon to La Nina conditions. Uganda experienced an El Nino phenomenon in 2015, writes Paul Tajuba.

At this time of the season, Emmanuel Ssemugabi would normally be harvesting or preparing to harvest beans, potatoes, maize and other crops planted between the August and December rainy season. This would be the period of the second rains in Uganda, the first being between March and May.
But in Kyetume village in Mukono District, Ssemugabi is in total distress. His crops have withered twice in both seasons of the first and second rains and he is now not sure of any harvest from the crops he re-planted in mid –October during the light showers his area received.

“It has been a bad year,” Ssemugabi says. “The crops failed in the first season and I have little hope even in this [second season]. It may be the same, we planted late; the rains delayed.”
Indeed, the crop failures are not affecting only Mr Ssemugabi or the Kyetume farmers but also mirror what is happening elsewhere in the country and the region. Several other farmers have as well registered massive crop failures across the country and as a result, over a million people are at risk of starving.
President Museveni, while presiding over Independence Day anniversary celebrations in Luuka District in October, lifted the lid on a crisis brewing in the heavily-funded Operation Wealth Creation effort spearheaded by his brother, Gen Salim Saleh.

The President said 40 per cent of the seedlings which had been supplied to farmers under the scheme had dried up due to lack of water. He then blamed the farmers for failing to irrigate their crops.
A few weeks later, Mr Museveni was out to demonstrate drip irrigation in Luweero District. He was pictured carrying a jerrycan of water on a pedal cycle and irrigating a handful of crops. His spokespeople said the President’s rural outreach was a gesture to Ugandan poor farmers that they can collect water from nearby sources and irrigate their crops.

The failure of rains this year would take on greater importance when it emerged weeks after the President’s tour in Luweero that residents of Isingiro District in western Uganda were famine-stricken because their crops had failed due to lack of rain to grow crops and water for their livestock. Not long ago, Isingiro District was a key source of the matooke widely sold in Kampala and other places.
If the residents of Isingiro are starving due to the failure of rain-fed agriculture, the situation should be worse in the semi-arid areas of north-eastern Uganda, which receive less rain and are more prone to famine. So the government reacted by sending out a high-level team to carry out sensitisation and assess the level of food scarcity.

Grim forecasts
The situation is not encouraging, at least in the short term, should the available forecasts by the weather department come to pass.
Recent Uganda National Meteorological Authority (UNMA) forecasts indicate that almost all regions of the country will experience little rainfall by late November or early December; never mind the rains only came in late October and peaked in November.
This means only farmers who followed advisories by the Ministry of Agriculture officials to plant early-maturing crops like vegetables, beans and potatoes will have considerable harvests this season.Most crops need more than two-and-a-half rainy months to mature.

The low rain, however, did not come as an outright surprise because all forecasts done by UNMA in consultation with regional and international scientists this year indicated that the country would experience “near-to-normal” at best and “below normal” rainfall across most areas.
‘Near-to-normal’ means the rainfall will not equal what should ordinarily be expected and ‘below normal’ means the rain will be less of what has been received overtime.
When releasing the September –December forecast, UNMA executive director Festus Luboyera said most parts of the country would be dry.
“This implies most regions…are expected to receive total rainfall that is below 75 per cent of the long-term mean of the base period of 1981-2010,” Mr Luboyera, said.

The science involved
Mr Deus Bamanya, the UNMA director for Applied Meteorology, Data and Climate Services, says the limited rain is a result of a reversal of the warming of the Central Pacific Ocean that was expected to move the global climate from an El Nino phenomenon to La Nina conditions. Uganda experienced an El Nino phenomenon in 2015.

In normal circumstances, La Nina translates into drought conditions, which have been experienced much of the year, and when an El Nino phenomenon happens, there will be more rain and flooding.
La Nina conditions develop when the Pacific Ocean cools below normal temperatures of the Sea Surface. The predictions at first showed a rapid cooling of the ocean,which would create conducive conditions for La Nina.
However, Mr Bamanya says as August approached, the Pacific Ocean cooling slowed down and with that, the La Nina conditions were no longer expected to mature, For Southern Africa, it is the other way round, meaning that they experienced El Nino conditions this year.

He says the La Nina phenomena is now neutral, meaning that it is likely not to have a big influence going forward and the rainfall situation could normalize next year.
Mr Patrick Luganda, the communications advisor to the Commission on Climatology in Geneva at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), says: “… although the La Nina conditions that were developing are now very mild, the Indian Ocean Dipole (the changing from warm to cold and cold to warm) has influenced the La Nina conditions to be more pronounced, bringing the drought conditions to be enhanced over our region.”

But not everything is conclusively known. Scientists say the influence of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) and its influence on our region is still a growing research area.
In the past it was thought that the Pacific Ocean was the greatest influencer but leading researchers into the subject, like Professor Laban Ogallo of Nairobi University and a consultant with the IGAD Climate Prediction and Analysis Center (ICPAC), advocate a closer monitoring of the India Ocean.
“The Indian ocean is the one to watch closely. The Pacific is too far away and although it causes is a global influencer and driver, the behavior of the nearer India Ocean has the more impacting influence,” professor Ogallo said in a recent interview at GHACOF 44 in Entebbe.

But Mr Bamanya fears the phenomena of La Nino and El Nino are now happening so often that several countries, including Uganda, may continue experiencing drought and extreme rainy seasons attributable to climate change.
“If you remember, we had El Nino [last year] and immediately we are having La Nino and it is because of climate change. They are occurring very frequently, yet they used to occur after three to four years, which reduced to two years and now are occur anytime,” Mr Bamanya says.
He encourages farmers to prepare for a possible long dry spell even though indications are that La Nino conditions are receding.

The science of La Nino and El Nino aside, climate science points to an array of other factors that may explain the low rainfall being experienced currently.
“There are many influences that disturb that simple equilibrium. So there are other main factors, including physical features like lakes, rivers, forests and height of the place (above sea level), that influence rainfall,” Mr Luganda says.
Uganda has experienced what many observers fear is a rapid rate of deforestation across the country, with forecasts by the national environmental agency NEMA claiming that unless the current rate at which trees are cut is stopped, the country could lose its entire forest cover by the end of the first half of this century.

Uganda loses nearly 200,000 hectares of forest cover annually according to latest estimates by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Because of the severe shortage of renewable energy supplies – like hydro, solar or wind power – an overwhelming majority of Uganda’s rapidly growing population relies on wood fuel for cooking and other functions.
This has turned charcoal burning into an important economic activity across the country, thereby heightening deforestation. Ominously, the little trees available in semi-arid areas like the Karamoja sub-region are being cut down for charcoal burning.

Once forests and other such physical features are destroyed and no serious measures are taken to stem the destruction, says Mr Frank Muramuzi of the National Association of Professional Environmentalists, the future is bleak.
“Drought will continue because our government has prioritised industries and not conservation,” Mr Muramuzi says.
Under such depressing circumstances, Mr Ssemugabi of Kyetume and millions of other Ugandans who directly rely on rain for survival will be the immediate casualties. Worse, Uganda’s entire country’s economy will suffer.