Onset Maize Growing Season in Mozambique, Under Future Climate Scenarios Simulated by RegCM4

During the southern hemisphere summer-season, Mozambique faces an array of agroclimatic hazards, the most prominent being the precipitation pattern highly variable. With ongoing climate change, the pattern of precipitation around the world is projected to be affect but, there are few studies about how this changes will impact the sub-regional and/or local scale. Throughout Mozambique, little more than 70% of the households has agricultural as its main income to livelihood, being rainfed the prevailing water management among the farming fields. Early warning about the onset dates of the rainy season is very useful for planning the timely preparation of farmlands and for reducing the risks involved in planting too early or too late. The present study aims to investigate the changes in onset and end of the rainy season, under two Representative Concentrations Pathways, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, relatively to current climate over Mozambique. To reach this goal and establish the possible forward or backward shift, the pentad method was applied for daily mean precipitation dataset simulated by regional climate model RegCM4 for maize growing-season over Mozambique. The findings indicate that, the entrance and withdrawal of the rainy season are in phase of climatology and with the results founded by Mozambique National Institute of Meteorology. The central-northern rainy season begins slightly later of the start in southern region of Mozambique, where the onset occurs in earlier October and, between October mid-half and early November gradually moves to central-northern regions. Under both climate scenarios however, there is a trend to shift, foreward and backward the onset and end of the rainy season, respectively. Meaning that, climate change could delay the onset and anticipate the end of the rainy season in Mozambique.