Bello
That damned child
The imminence of another El Niño is a test of Andean progress
Jun 28th 2014
.
AS A rather younger man, Bello arrived in Lima in November 1982 just as an unprecedentedly severe El Niño current was getting under way. The sea temperature climbed to 2.2°C above average. Peru’s northern desert became a lake; bridges, roads and power lines were washed away. Emaciated pelicans flapped forlornly over the city. In drought-stricken villages in Bolivia’s barren Altiplano, families ate their seed potatoes; their children were visibly malnourished.
Bello is now back in Lima. It is early winter in the southern hemisphere yet the days are unseasonably warm and sunny. Starved of the Pacific anchovies on which they normally feed, hundreds of dead sea birds have appeared on beaches in northern Peru. These are unmistakable signs of the warming of the cold waters of the south-eastern Pacific, and thus of the approach of another El Niño.
Named for “the boy” (Jesus) by Peruvian fishermen more than a century ago, because it normally becomes fully apparent around Christmas, El Niño (together with its cooling sibling, La Niña) is a complex, naturally occurring weather phenomenon. Every two to seven years much of the warm water that collects in the western Pacific sloshes back eastward to the seaboard of South America. That brings torrential rain and flooding to Ecuador, Peru’s desert coast and western Bolivia, and drought to the Andean highlands of Peru and Bolivia.
Scientists now know that El Niño disrupts normal climate patterns across much of the world. It brings drought and forest fires to northern Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia. It can lessen the monsoon and Caribbean hurricanes, cause heavy rains in California and southern Brazil, and drought in other parts of the United States and northern Brazil. Research by Japanese scientists found that, in the year that it appears, El Niño prompts a fall of 2.3% in average world yields of maize, of 1.4% in wheat and of 0.4% in rice.
A big one is due. Severe El Niños normally occur every 15 to 20 years; the last one was in 1997-98. Scientists are cautious. There is a 75-80% chance of El Niño developing by the northern-hemisphere autumn, says Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. But it adds that most climate models are predicting a moderate one.
The next El Niño will be a test for the region. Back in 1983 a preliminary evaluation by the UN concluded that the total damage in lost housing, infrastructure and production equalled 13.4% of GDP in Bolivia, 9.3% in Peru and 4.9% in Ecuador (Central America and Brazil were badly hit, too). The El Niño of 1997-98, with slightly higher sea temperatures than in 1983, caused damage on a similar scale, although that time Ecuador was worst hit. On each occasion, the fallout included political instability of various kinds.
In 1983 Latin America was bankrupt, reeling from debt defaults and dictatorships. This time most governments are much better placed to weather El Niño. Ecuador’s finance ministry has arranged a contingent credit line of up to $1.2 billion. Peru’s government has budgeted $1.1 billion for preventive work to strengthen bridges, river defences and the like. There is a question-mark over whether that money will actually be spent: the culture minister, Diana Álvarez Calderón, says she is still waiting for 15m soles ($5.3m) she has requested to protect archaeological sites at risk of flooding.
Losses from natural disasters are mounting in Latin America; they totalled some $50 billion in 2001-10, according to the World Bank. But fewer people are being killed in disasters; more losses are insured; and governments often provide emergency cash-transfers to victims. They could do even more, says Ede Ijjasz Vasquez, a bank official, such as paving rural roads with cobbles to prevent them being washed away. Linking up their electricity grids would help, too. (Fearful that drought will hurt hydroelectric power generation, Colombia has already reduced gas exports to Venezuela to ensure it can meet internal demand.)
Such measures would be good preparation for climate change, to which the increased incidence of natural disasters may be linked. The same does not necessarily go for El Niño, with respect to which “the end of the 20th century was no more active than the end of the 19th century,” according to Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia University.
Archaeologists now believe that the Moche empire, which saw an extraordinary flowering of population and culture in Peru’s northern coastal valleys, was brought down by a severe El Niño in the sixth century. Whatever the strength of the coming one, governments must be alert.
AS A rather younger man, Bello arrived in Lima in November 1982 just as an unprecedentedly severe El Niño current was getting under way. The sea temperature climbed to 2.2°C above average. Peru’s northern desert became a lake; bridges, roads and power lines were washed away. Emaciated pelicans flapped forlornly over the city. In drought-stricken villages in Bolivia’s barren Altiplano, families ate their seed potatoes; their children were visibly malnourished.
Bello is now back in Lima. It is early winter in the southern hemisphere yet the days are unseasonably warm and sunny. Starved of the Pacific anchovies on which they normally feed, hundreds of dead sea birds have appeared on beaches in northern Peru. These are unmistakable signs of the warming of the cold waters of the south-eastern Pacific, and thus of the approach of another El Niño.
Named for “the boy” (Jesus) by Peruvian fishermen more than a century ago, because it normally becomes fully apparent around Christmas, El Niño (together with its cooling sibling, La Niña) is a complex, naturally occurring weather phenomenon. Every two to seven years much of the warm water that collects in the western Pacific sloshes back eastward to the seaboard of South America. That brings torrential rain and flooding to Ecuador, Peru’s desert coast and western Bolivia, and drought to the Andean highlands of Peru and Bolivia.
Scientists now know that El Niño disrupts normal climate patterns across much of the world. It brings drought and forest fires to northern Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia. It can lessen the monsoon and Caribbean hurricanes, cause heavy rains in California and southern Brazil, and drought in other parts of the United States and northern Brazil. Research by Japanese scientists found that, in the year that it appears, El Niño prompts a fall of 2.3% in average world yields of maize, of 1.4% in wheat and of 0.4% in rice.
A big one is due. Severe El Niños normally occur every 15 to 20 years; the last one was in 1997-98. Scientists are cautious. There is a 75-80% chance of El Niño developing by the northern-hemisphere autumn, says Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society. But it adds that most climate models are predicting a moderate one.
The next El Niño will be a test for the region. Back in 1983 a preliminary evaluation by the UN concluded that the total damage in lost housing, infrastructure and production equalled 13.4% of GDP in Bolivia, 9.3% in Peru and 4.9% in Ecuador (Central America and Brazil were badly hit, too). The El Niño of 1997-98, with slightly higher sea temperatures than in 1983, caused damage on a similar scale, although that time Ecuador was worst hit. On each occasion, the fallout included political instability of various kinds.
In 1983 Latin America was bankrupt, reeling from debt defaults and dictatorships. This time most governments are much better placed to weather El Niño. Ecuador’s finance ministry has arranged a contingent credit line of up to $1.2 billion. Peru’s government has budgeted $1.1 billion for preventive work to strengthen bridges, river defences and the like. There is a question-mark over whether that money will actually be spent: the culture minister, Diana Álvarez Calderón, says she is still waiting for 15m soles ($5.3m) she has requested to protect archaeological sites at risk of flooding.
Losses from natural disasters are mounting in Latin America; they totalled some $50 billion in 2001-10, according to the World Bank. But fewer people are being killed in disasters; more losses are insured; and governments often provide emergency cash-transfers to victims. They could do even more, says Ede Ijjasz Vasquez, a bank official, such as paving rural roads with cobbles to prevent them being washed away. Linking up their electricity grids would help, too. (Fearful that drought will hurt hydroelectric power generation, Colombia has already reduced gas exports to Venezuela to ensure it can meet internal demand.)
Such measures would be good preparation for climate change, to which the increased incidence of natural disasters may be linked. The same does not necessarily go for El Niño, with respect to which “the end of the 20th century was no more active than the end of the 19th century,” according to Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia University.
Archaeologists now believe that the Moche empire, which saw an extraordinary flowering of population and culture in Peru’s northern coastal valleys, was brought down by a severe El Niño in the sixth century. Whatever the strength of the coming one, governments must be alert.
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario