Wednesday 11 March 2009

Is Venezuela entering a new Ice Age?


















El Universal reports today (Spanish) "an intense cold wave hits the North-coastal region" of Venezuela: temperatures drop to a minimum of 16°C to 17°C and max of 29°C to 30°C.

Venezuela's non-mountainous regions are usually very warm, but the fact people now react so surprised at this "cold wave" shows how they have become used to ever-rising temperatures in the last couple of decades. A local minimum of 16°C is a shock. Unfortunately, hardly anyone records temperatures over a long period of time in Venezuela so that the population can be reminded this used to happen at this time of the year. There is a weather service, but it seems journalists don't check out with them now about the long-term conditions. Our coastal region is at a latitude of 10° in the Northern hemisphere, so we are sort of getting out of winter.

3 comments:

  1. Geez... What next, a tornado? A Volcano erupting? Why not a landslide, while we're at it?
    No luck, huh. With our visionary social planners, I wouldn't be surprised if they did nothing (aka: keep on working as they are now) and acted all surprised when nature comes around and smacks us in the face with rains or storms and kills half the people in our shantytowns.
    On the bright side, we beat the friggin' gringos at their own baseball game... Hehe, "déjeme reír, para no llorar", (R. Blades, dixit).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7940532.stm

    And in the US the extremists think there is no global warming as this winter was colder...they never heard of local minima/maxima.
    Some people can be short-sighed

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry, Vincente, I deleted by error a comment of yours in an old post. I did not follow up what you said. I was trying to reedit a comment of mine.
    Kepler

    ReplyDelete

1) Try to be constructive and creative. The main goal of this blog is not to bash but to propose ideas and, when needed, to denounce
2) Do not use offensive language
3) Bear in mind that your comments can be edited or deleted at the blogger's sole discretion
4) If your comment would link back to a site promoting hatred of ethnic groups, nations, religions or the like, don't bother commenting here.
5) Read point 4 again