[Kabar-indonesia] Bandung losing its cool [+El Nino to stay until spring 2007]

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

also: El Nino to stay until spring 2007, says US gov't

The Jakarta Post
Friday, October 6, 2006

Bandung losing its cool 

Yuli Tri Suwarni, The Jakarta Post, Bandung

Bandung has increasingly lost its usual mild temperatures in recent days.

Hendri Subakti, the head of the Bandung Meteorology and Geophysics Agency 
(BMG), said Thursday that the city's temperature hit 33.2 degrees Celsius on 
Wednesday, the second highest in the last four years. 

The highest temperature, 34.9 degrees Celsius, was recorded on Oct. 21, 2002, 
according the Bandung BMG. 

Hendri attributed the high temperature to the current long drought, with no 
rainfall over the last two months, as well as a worsening micro-climate. 

"This is the beginning of October, the temperature could possibly rise later. 
Just wait, because the position of the sun is the closest to us right now," 
he said. 

Even though it is hot, Bandung, which is located 700 meters above sea level, 
still has cool temperatures compared to cities at lower elevations like 
Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Semarang and Surabaya. 

Hendri said as a city with a mild climate, Bandung's ideal temperature was 
between 23 and 24 degrees. 

Besides the proximity of the sun to the earth, Hendri said the micro-climate 
-- that is, the conditions in the local area -- was suffering from increasing 
deforestation due to development. 

"Slowly but surely the number of trees is shrinking. The change in the 
spatial scheme means more radiation gets reflected. Along with the pollution, the 
radiation cannot escape out of Bandung because it's shaped like a basin," Hendri 
said. 

He added that satellite photos show larger amounts of red in the Bandung area 
and less green. That means more buildings, which contribute to the heat, and 
fewer trees, which mitigate it. 

----------------------------------------

El Nino to stay until spring 2007, says US gov't

NEW YORK, October 5 (Reuters) - El Nino, a weather pattern that can
wreak havoc in the Asia-Pacific region, will stay at least until
spring 2007, the monthly report by the U.S. Climate Prediction Center
said Thursday.

The CPC, an agency of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration,
said on its Web site that El Nino will stay "for the remainder of 2006
and into the northern hemisphere spring of 2007."

El Nino is an abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific
Ocean which causes wild swings in weather from Asia to South America
-- causing searing drought in some and rampant flooding in others.

El Nino means 'little boy' in Spanish. The phenomenon was given the
name by its first observers, South American anchovy fishermen in the
19th century, because it normally peaked around Christmas.

The CPC said "typical" El Nino effects are likely to develop over
North America during the winter.

This would include "warmer-than-average temperatures over western and
central Canada, and over the western and northern United States,
wetter-than-average conditions over portions of the U.S. Gulf Coast
and Florida, and drier-than-average conditions in the Ohio Valley and
the Pacific Northwest."

Mild weather over the northern U.S. and Canada would affect the
world's top heating oil market.

Turning its attention to how El Nino would affect other parts of the
world, the report said drier-than-average weather would be likely
during November to March "over most of Malaysia, Indonesia, some of
the U.S.-affiliated islands in the tropical North Pacific, northern
South America and southeastern Africa."

CPC said it should see "wetter-than-average conditions over equatorial
East Africa, central South American (Uruguay, northeastern Argentina,
and southern Brazil) and along the coasts of Ecuador and northern
Peru."

The CPC's top El Nino expert, Vernon Kousky, told Reuters this El Nino
will not be as bad as the 1997/98 version which killed hundreds and
caused billions of dollars in damages.

------------------------------------------
Joyo Indonesia News Service
------------------------------------------