News
Four experts present their studies on climate variability in the Caribbean region and the Dominican Republic
They analyzed the behavior of temperature, precipitations and cyclones, and discussed the effects of El Niño and La Niña
Santo Domingo, August 23, 2007
Four climate specialists gave presentations last Thursday’s midmorning as part of the “Second conference on climate change: evidence of global warming in the Dominican Republic” program, which takes place at FUNGLODE.
The first one to intervene was Moisés Álvarez, from the National University Pedro Henrique Ureña (UNPHU), with the conference “Study on the climatic pattern of the Dominican Republic and its relation with El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO)".
At the beginning of his presentation, Alvarez did a short analysis of climatic pattern trends for a 37 year period (1961-1998) in terms of rain and temperatures, based on data gathered in 16 meteorological stations in the country. He also described how it has affected El Niño and La Niña phenomena.
Álvarez stated that “there is a trend in most of the stations in the study that indicates less rain in the most severe periods of El Niño (1972, 1982-1983 and 1997-1998) and an increase in rain in La Niña events (1973-1974 and 1975 and the event of 1988-1989)”. According to his conclusions, this demonstrates that the temperature pattern tends to increase with El Niño and decrease with La Niña.
Answering to the audience questions, Alvarez explained that currently, a difference in the sea level can be noticed in relation to the level registered 30 years ago. “This is a consequence of the climate change impact and has caused the disappearance of several beaches in the Dominican Republic due to the high level reached by the water”.
Atmosphere
After Álvarez’s presentation, the turn came for Michela Izzo from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), with the conference titled “Importance of climatic vulnerability and geomorphologic studies as a base to face Climate Change in the Dominican Republic”.
Izzo started her presentation giving a brief explanation of climate as a concept. She exposed that climate is understood as “the set of atmospheric conditions characterized by the state and evolution of weather in a specific area”. Thus, climate is composed by the different dinamics that exist between the sun, the atmosphere and the earth’s surface.
The expert highlighted that to better understand the cause and effect of climate variability, several factors should be analyzed. According to the information provided by Michela Izzo, many of the problems are caused because ecology and economy are considered different concepts. “However, looking at the etymology of the words, both come from the same word, they are two aspects of the same situation, the same system. It isn’t possible to manage a territory in an environmental system without knowing it”.
As a final remark in her presentation, Izzo stated that a project proposal on climate change is currently under development. The main institutions in the field are involved. Izzo explained that “the project contributes to define the vulnerability of Dominican territory to soil degradation and disasters linked to climate change, identifying the climatologic and geologic-environmental dynamics in some areas of the country with a particular focus in the soil and the associated risk”.
Variations
Caridad Perez, Meteorology National Office representative, followed Michela Izzo in the order of interventions. She gave the conference “Spatial variability and intensity of climate trends in the Caribbean and the Dominican Republic”.
“In the last years, starting in the 70s, there has been an increase in maximum temperatures, for instance, in most studied stations, at least seven has seen a temperature rise”, Perez said. She added that so far, a decreasing precipitation trend has been identified in the Caribbean region, which has been forecasted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The expert sustained that the sample temperature measurements’ results show an ascending variation of one degree in average. “This is caused by natural effects and human intervention: the use of land, tree felling and cities’ expansion”, she stated.
Cyclones, el Niño and la Niña
Juana Sillé Puello, from the Meteorology National Office (ONAMET), presented the topic “The ENSO phenomenon in the Dominican Republic and its relation with tropical cyclones”.
The meteorology expert explained that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) “is an oceanic-atmospheric cycle that has an ocean component and an atmospheric component”.
After a technical detail preamble, Sille stated that most tropical cyclones, storms or hurricanes “that have affected the Dominican Republic have occurred in Neutral phase years and El Niño. Thus, these years are classified not only as rainy or very rainy, but also belong to the phase N+ of the ENSO.”
Back to NEWS >>
|
