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In recent decades, southern Africa has experienced a shift towards hotter and drier climate conditions, affecting vital sectors like agriculture, health, water, and energy. Scientific research has shown that the combination of high temperatures and unreliable rainfall can have detrimental effects on agricultural production. Thus, this study focused on assessing climate variability, with implications on rangelands in the Limpopo Province of South Africa over 38 years. Historical climate data from 15 stations, including rainfall and minimum and maximum temperatures from 1980 to 2018, were analysed. To achieve the main objective, various statistics including mean, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation (CV) were computed for all variables across four seasons. The results highlighted significant variability in rainfall, with Musina (71.2%) and Tshiombo (88.3%) stations displaying the highest variability during the September-to-April season. Both minimum and maximum temperatures displayed low variability. The Mann–Kendall test revealed both increasing and decreasing trends in minimum temperatures and rainfall across different stations. Notably, there was a significant increase in maximum temperatures. This study provides valuable climate information for decision makers, aiding in the planning and management of agricultural activities, particularly in understanding how climate variations affect forage availability in rangelands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The temporal and spatial distribution of the frequency of breaking highest and lowest daily maximum and minimum temperature records over the period of 1951–2019 has been investigated for South Africa. Temperature records are station specific and defined as either larger or smaller than any previous values in a time series of specific year‐days. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures from homogenized time series of 25 weather stations in South Africa were analysed. Aspects considered to influence the frequency of record‐breaking events were the warming trend and variance. The study found that the record‐breaking frequencies of the highest daily maximum (high Tmax) and some high daily minimum temperature (high Tmin) records were higher than the theoretically expected number in a stationary climate. This was particularly apparent near the end of the analysis period. The ratio of highest maximum to lowest minimum temperature records was almost an equal 1:1 ratio near the start of the analysis period and increased to a about 4:1 in the last decade of the period. Focusing on the last decade, that is, 2010–2019 the study found that there is a different spatial pattern between the occurrence of high Tmax and high Tmin records. For high Tmax records the highest number were mostly recorded by stations over the central parts of the country (e.g., Kimberley, Glen College and Bloemfontein). In contrast, the highest number of high Tmin records were less confined spatially. Even when considering the general warming due to climate change, many more high temperature records are broken than expected in certain regions and on average. We deduce that the higher than expected numbers of high Tmax and high Tmin records in the latter part of the analysis period were mainly due to the variability in the warming trend with acceleration in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]