Warming up

The weather has shifted in Maun and we’re getting a foretaste of the heat of summer. And with it, questions to HOORC’s library about temperatures and climate change.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Climate Change portal is a good starting point for global information, with links to maps and graphics and other important sites like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The ELDIS site’s Climate Change Resource Guide links to research about the impact of climate change on tourism, water and health, as well as providing a page devoted to climate change and Africa. SciDevNet’s dossier on climate change offers news, policy briefs and reports, including links to climate change in Africa. Most of the publications found on the web site of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), a research programme that studies the phenomenon of global change, are free for downloading.

Closer to home, the Botswana Meteorological Services’ attractive and up-to-date web site now publishes its monthly Weather and Agrometeorological Bulletins online. And in HOORC’s Library, you can find Tyson and Preston-Whyte’s The Weather and Climate of Southern Africa with a whole chapter on climate change and variability, and The Rough Guide to Weather with its Primer on Global Change.