Pacific, ocean and atmosphere [ 466 ]

El Niño, La Niña, and Rainfall

December 1985

Perhaps nowhere is the intricate relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere more evident than in the eastern Pacific. The ocean’s surface cools and warms cyclically in response to the strength of the trade winds. In turn, the changing ocean alters rainfall patterns. This series of images shows the dance between ocean and atmosphere. Changes in rainfall, right, echo changes in sea surface temperature, left. Many people recognize the extreme ends of the spectrum, El Niño and La Niña, by the severe droughts and intense rains each brings to different parts of the world.

El Niño occurs when warm water builds up along the equator in the eastern Pacific. The warm ocean surface warms the atmosphere, which allows moisture-rich air to rise and develop into rainstorms. The clearest example of El Niño in this series of images is 1997. The unusually warm waters are dark purple in the sea surface temperature anomaly image, indicating that waters were as much as 6 degrees Celsius warmer than average.

The corresponding streak of dark blue in the rainfall anomaly image reveals that as much as 12 millimeters more rain than average fell over the warmed eastern Pacific. The unusual rainfall extended into northwestern South America (Ecuador and Peru). The disruption in the atmosphere impacts rainfall throughout the world. In the United States, the strongest change in rainfall is in the southeast, the region closest to the pool of warm Pacific water. During El Niño years, such as 1997, the southeast receives more rain than average.

La Niña is the build up of cool waters in the equatorial eastern Pacific, such as occurred in 1988 and, to a slightly lesser degree, 1998. La Niña’s impacts are opposite those of El Niño. The atmosphere cools in response to the cold ocean surface, and less water evaporates. The cooler, dry air is dense. It doesn’t rise or form storms. As a result, less rain falls over the eastern Pacific. Ecuador, Peru, and the southeastern United States are correspondingly dry.

El Niño and La Niña reflect the two end points of an oscillation in the Pacific Ocean. The cycle is not fully understood, but the times series illustrates that the cycle swings back and forth every 3-7 years. Often, El Niño is followed immediately by La Niña, as if the warm water is sloshing back and forth across the Pacific. The development of El Niño events is linked to the trade winds. El Niño occurs when the trade winds are weaker than normal, and La Niña occurs when they are stronger than normal. Both cycles typically peak in December.

El Niño and La Niña aren’t the only cycles evident in this image series. The Pacific Ocean is moody: It turns slightly hot or slightly cold every couple of years. This bi-annual pattern isn’t the distinctive, well-defined stripe of warm ocean waters near the equator typical of El Niño, but rather, a general warming of the ocean.

On top of the two-year warm/cold cycle and the El Niño/La Niña pattern is a broader decadal cycle in which the Pacific has a warm and a cool phase. In the 1990s, the Pacific was in a warm phase. The strong El Niño of 1997 marked the end of the warm phase. Since 1997, the Pacific has been in a generally cool phase, during which time strong El Niño events have not been able to form.

The sea surface temperature anomaly images were made from data collected by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer between 1985 and 2008. They show the average sea surface temperature for the month of December compared to a long-term average of surface temperatures observed between 1985 and 2008. The rainfall anomaly images are from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project, which blends rainfall data from a number of satellites. The images compare December rainfall with the average December rainfall observed between 1979 and 2008.

Impacts of climate changes...[ 465 ]

Climate map shows human impacts

A map designed to show the predicted effects of a 4C rise in global average temperature has been unveiled by the UK government. It shows a selection of the impacts of climate change on human activity. These include extreme temperatures, drought, effects on water availability, agricultural productivity, the risk of forest fire and sea level rise. The map is based on peer-reviewed science from the Met Office's Hadley Centre and other scientific groups. It was launched at the Science Museum by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Climate and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and the UK's chief scientist Professor John Beddington. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, agricultural yields would be expected to decrease for all major cereal crops in all major regions of production. In addition, half of all Himalayan glaciers will be significantly reduced by 2050, leading to 23% of the population of China being deprived of the vital dry season glacial meltwater. The impacts are those expected to result following a global average temperature rises of 4C above the pre-industrial climate average. Mr Miliband commented: "To tackle the problem of climate change, all of us - foreign ministries, environment ministries, treasuries, departments of defence and all parts of government and societies - must work together to keep global temperatures to 2C."

USA : Death executon in Virginia[ 464 ]

'Washington sniper' to be executed on Nov. 10 by injection

WASHINGTON, October 28 (RIA Novosti) - John Allen Muhammad, a 'sniper,' who went on a killing spree in the United States in 2002 murdering 10 and wounding six people, was sent to death in Virginia on November 10.

Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said 'the sniper' will be executed by a lethal injection in the state of Virginia.

"Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law [of Virginia] the method defaults to lethal injection," Traylor was quoted by the U.S. media as saying.

Muhammad, 48, carried out attacks with a teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, who is already serving a life sentence in the United States, and began shooting people with a sniper rifle in the states of Alabama and Louisiana, before moving to the Washington D.C. area.

Collapse of the Illusion...[ 463 ]

America Moving from Kingdom of Cash to Socialism Slowly but Surely

19.10.2009

Obama’s decision not to build the Missile Defense System in Poland and the Czech Republic and his Noble Prize have not yet been comprehended from a philosophical viewpoint. It’s time to do it.

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Power of Money against Power of Spirit

The last turning point similar to the current one happened approximately 400 years ago. The Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with capitalism. Wealth became the measure of success, and everyone was to care about his own pocket only. The cult of money replaced all other values, including religious.

Capitalism turned everything upside down and made people more excited about stuffing their bank accounts than anything else. This system turned out to be extremely efficient in terms of production of goods, services, and comfort. America benefited from the system the most, and decided that the rest of the world has to adopt it as well. If some underdeveloped countries are unable to appreciate the benefits of capitalism, they should be forced to do it.

Collapse of the Illusion

Meanwhile, philosophers says that capitalism is driven not by hard cash, but rather, striving for hard cash. It’s driven not by the production of goods, but rather, striving for consumption of these goods.

If everyone had these values, the “dog-eat-dog” principal would be the major principal in the world history. But America failed to do it. There are plenty of “underdeveloped” people in the world who continue to cherish spiritual values. There are not that many chances left to force them into worshiping money since these “underdeveloped” people adopt western technology and become stronger. The appeal to adopt American values doesn’t work either. Why would we adopt the system if the system is in crisis? Pragmatic America realized that billions of people are not willing to live in the kingdom of hard cash and decided that it would be better off leaving this kingdom itself. Now the USA is talking about introducing elements of socialism.

What does Obama’s decision not to build the Eastern European Missile Defense System have to do with all of this? Well, it means that it’s not capitalism that’s undergoing the crisis, but the belief in its high efficiency. And this, in turn, means that America, the bulwark of capitalism, is no longer the boss of the world. And if it’s not the boss any more, it has to be friends with everybody, including Russia. And it’s America’s turn to offer Russia to push the reset button. Or maybe it’s just tired of imposing its rules on others and felt that friendship is more valuable than money and power? If this is the case, we will soon witness another turning point in the world history.

The ocean-going sailing canoes [ 462 ]

Yap revives ancient art of star sailing

By Ben Lowings BBC News, Yap24-10-09

The traditional canoes are built without using nails, blueprints or measuring tapes

The ancient skills of building ocean-going canoes and sailing them by star across great distances are being revived on the Pacific island of Yap, as the BBC's Ben Lowings reports.

In the mangrove woods on the shores of Yap, part of Micronesia, canoe-builders are busy with adzes and saws.

Groups of men - young and old - are standing on a carpet of wood shavings, fashioning local timber.

As Chief Tharngwan looks on, the teams put together the vessels, ready for the first annual canoe festival of the Yap Traditional Navigation Society.

No nails are used, nor blueprints or measuring tapes - just a leaf from a coconut palm.

Chief Tharngwan places the leaf on the side of the hull and designates a cut with a sweep of his pencil. It is evidence that the Micronesian voyaging canoe is literally a design taken from nature.

Deep ocean sailing

As the festival gets underway, in Colonia, the capital of Yap State, Yapese women will dance in grass skirts, with strands of red, yellow and green livery.

An open-ocean voyage has been planned and smaller canoes will be raced on the smoother waters within the Yap reef.

Watching from the shore, dozens of sailors and enthusiasts are expected from Yap's outer atolls, Guam and the neighbouring states of Micronesia.

Each island has a star above it... There is a star above this island. And there is a star above that place. And I steer between the two Ali Haleyalur Master Navigator

The drink of choice will be tuba - gallons of the liquid have been prepared for visitors and participants. It is a wine made from the fermented sap of the coconut palm.

The celebration marks a revival of what was the world's first ocean-going technology - and the navigational methods used to steer the canoes across the vast Pacific.

Master Navigator Ali Haleyalur teaches the art of celestial navigation. He is from the Yapese outer islands of Lamotrek and Satowal.

He sails in the traditional manner - by the stars, winds and currents. He does not use maps, or star-charts.

He points to his head. "It's all in here," he says.

Marshall Islanders, Ali says, are the only Micronesians who make physical charts of any kind - and even these are only made of sticks and pebbles lashed together.

"There can only be one master navigator on each island," he says.

It will be many years before he chooses one of his students to take over his role. Even now, those students are keeping watch at night for him on the occasional inter-island trip. But he is the captain for now.

He has sailed thousands of miles across the deep ocean.

A whale surfaced under his canoe on a recent trip to the neighbouring nation of Palau, about 400km (250 miles) from Yap.

The canoe was lifted out of the water on the whale's back. But his crew's prayers were eventually answered, he says, and the whale swam away.

Island stars

How do you sail on the deep ocean, without charts, lifejackets or radios?

The canoes can be navigated across wide areas of open ocean

Mr Haleyalur laughs gently when I ask him if he keeps a GPS device as a backup. "No GPS," he smiles broadly.

Then, in his soft-spoken manner, this big man lets me in on the basics of celestial navigation.

It is a lesson, I imagine, in the same style as his quiet mutterings to his young initiates, on a starry night miles from land.

"Even if you can't see the island on the water, you can see the island," he explains.

The stars nearest the horizon do not wheel around the sky as do those higher up.

"Each island has a star above it," Mr Haleyalur continues. "I sail through one place. There is a star above this island. And there is a star above that place. And I steer between the two."

In essence, the navigator uses the stars as directional tools, to plot a course between islands - even if those islands are only a few kilometres wide, and hundreds of kilometres away from the boat.

Valuable transportation

Ancient sailing and boatbuilding skills have been in decline for decades.

But Mr Haleyalur is part of a new education programme now under way in Yap to try to reverse this trend.

Many young Yapese are not so interested in sailing traditional canoes

The Yapese boat builders are using the same skills as their forebears - who came here by boat.

"We are constructing two types of canoe," Mr Haleyalur says.

"One type from the outer islands - we are building paddling canoes from the outer islands, and voyaging canoes - very big ones."

Islanders rely on marine outboard motors and imported fibreglass hulls when available. But Mr Haleyalur says sailing canoes are a realistic alternative transport for young islanders.

"I believe we can use our canoes. We can move about between two places. In some places it's the only method of transportation. We don't want to lose this. We want to keep them alive."

'Finding new places'

There have been problems getting young people interested. But it was Mr Haleyalur's students in their 20s - involved in the canoe school - who took me out in their 20-foot outrigger canoe.

Underneath the tropical sun, we went out into the lagoon.

The crew of three young men were surefooted, in tune with the movement of the boat. Their arms and legs cast strong shadows on the deck, almost seeming like part of the boat's rigging itself.

Paul Lane organised Yap's first annual canoe festival

A former US Peace Corps volunteer, Paul Lane, has organised the inaugural canoe festival. For Paul, the canoes deserve to be celebrated in Yap, and around the world

"The world's first ocean-going technology is the reason people got going," he says.

For Paul the canoe symbolises "the wanting to explore, to go to new places - the need to explore, to go to new places- for the survival of humanity."

The ancestors of today's Micronesians set sail from the Philippines and landed on these remote shores, thousands of years ago.

"That's what it's all about," Paul says. "People needed to find new places."