This past Thursday, when opening the virtual Climate Summit in which 40 world leaders participate, the President of the United States, Joe Biden, who in his capacity as Democratic leader is committed to the environmental fight against climate change, clearly expressed that “we are in a decisive decade to face climate change”, and promised that by 2030 the United States will have halved its large emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that reach the atmosphere, a promise whose objective is that The nations that together with the United States contribute the highest volumes of CO2, such as China, the European Union, India, Russia, Japan and South Korea, make the same commitments, since together these industrialized countries contribute 70% of the total volume of CO2 that reaches the atmosphere, although only China contributes 29% of the total, knowing that the more CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, the greater the warming we will have on the planet’s surface Land, including the surface of the sea.
Therefore, in an article that we published in the month of August of last year 2020 in this newspaper elCaribe, we warned that when observing the temperatures of the Pacific Ocean during the overlapping quarters of the year 2020, and comparing them with the average temperatures of the surface of that extensive sea, January-February-March with + 0.6 ° C (Child), February-March-April with + 0.5 ° C (Child), March-April-May with + 0.3 ° C (neutral), April-May -June with 0.0 ° C (neutral), and May-June-July with -0.2 ° C (neutral), which showed a downward trend in Pacific temperatures and a trend towards the development of the La Niña phenomenon, and that when This happens, in the Pacific there is dryness of the air, increased atmospheric pressure and droughts in the American countries of the Pacific, while in the Atlantic the temperature increases, the amount of water vapor increases, the rains increase, the pressure decreases atmospheric, and increases the number of tropical depressions that can lead to storms and hurricanes, which implied that the months of September, October, November and December of the year 2020 could bring more storms and hurricanes than originally foreseen by NOAA, and that all the countries in the region (Caribbean, Central America, Mexico and United States) needed to prepare for aggravated weather contingencies.
And so it was, because at the beginning of November, when normally the waters of the Atlantic Ocean begin to cool down and meteorological phenomena diminish, tropical storm Eta was formed in the southwestern portion of the Dominican Republic, the 28th of the cyclonic season. 2020, which, in a few hours, became a powerful category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 240 kilometers per hour, which when hitting Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala left havoc mainly caused by torrential rains; but just as the remnants of Eta dissipated, and while the Theta storm, the 29th of the season, was still active, the Iota storm, the 30th of the season, was formed, just in the same place where 2 weeks ago it had formed Eta, and that, like Eta, rapidly evolved into a powerful hurricane and in the same direction, but surpassed it because it reached category 5, with maximum sustained winds of 260 kilometers per hour, being the second hurricane in history to reach category 5 in November, confirming that, as we had warned, the development of the La Niña phenomenon would multiply the number of cyclones in the 2020 Atlantic season, becoming a record season, almost doubling what was originally forecast by the National Oceanic Administration and United States Atmospheric (NOAA).
And it is that when observing the temperatures of the surface of the Pacific Ocean during the overlapping quarters of the first semester of the year 2020, and comparing them with the average temperatures of the surface of that ocean, a trend was seen to the seasonal decrease of the temperature on the surface marine, a decrease that reached its peak in the October-November-December quarter, with -1.3 ° C (Niña), which explains the strength of hurricanes Eta and Iota in a month like November, but that trend is now changing, since temperatures on the surface of the Pacific have been rising and it is expected that for the next overlapping quarters of May-June-July and June-July-August the temperature over that sea will be the same average temperature used as a general reference, that is, without increase or decrease (neutral), which implies that from the present moment we are in a neutral period that could extend until September, and that would translate into a decrease in the regime. in the next 5 months, so the institutions that manage water for aqueducts and irrigation canals must begin to plan a rational use of the water stored in the reservoirs of the dams, and begin to guide the population so that it saves water, but especially to the irrigation boards, since agricultural irrigation absorbs 70% of the total water consumed and also represents the sector with the greatest waste of water as a result of flood irrigation, instead of prioritizing irrigation drip and sprinkler irrigation.
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