Bad breath

By Herbie Gomez

I AM keeping an eye on the changing weather patterns, and on how topsy-turvy the conditions have become. Notice how the storms changed directions after the onslaughts of “Sendong” in 2011, “Pablo” in 2012, and “Yolanda” in 2013 that left trails of death and destruction in Mindanao and Visayas. This year, it’s Luzon that has been taking the beating.

The state weather bureau Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) has been correct so far in its forecasts that El Nino would persist, and there would be lesser rainfall but more powerful storms this year.

The science illiterate cannot seem to fathom this seeming contradiction given that he has long associated El Nino with drought. In his ignorant mind is this question: how do drought and powerful storms figure?

But El Nino is not drought. Rather, it is the warm water current in the Pacific Ocean that flows along the equator. That we are complaining of the scorching heat and the humidity even during this supposedly wet season is because we are surrounded by the warmer ocean. Try cooking in a kitchen without proper ventilation, and see if you can withstand the heat.

The thing about warm ocean waters is that these serve as fuel to storms. The warmer the ocean is, the more powerful storms become. This explains the ferocity of our storms or why whenever it rains, it really rains.

The weather patterns could dramatically change before year-end, and some meteorologists are saying that December is the month to watch. They are saying that while dry conditions would likely prevail in the southern parts of the country till next year, Mindanao included, tropical activity could throttle back, and could result in a record number of typhoons through year-end.

Most of the tropical activity, according to international meteorologist Anthony Sagliani, would be in December, and his list of countries facing greater risks of being battered by typhoons includes––you guessed it right––us.

I am glad that the rivers of Cagayan de Oro are green now. I passed by the Iponan River last week, and took note that the water is not just green, but blue green. The fact that it’s no longer “chocolate brown” only means that something right is being done no matter what the sour grapes that didn’t get what they wanted are saying. I’m just unsure how the city’s rivers would fare vis-à-vis another Sendong-like deluge.

It was Sendong that sparked a clamor for change, redefined local politics, and spawned a political tsunami, a situation that left the city’s former overlords, their hatchet men, and spin doctors defenseless. Nature is something that even the best political strategists can neither plan nor prepare for.

Will there be a repeat of Sendong? I don’t know but again, the period to watch is between now and December.

• •

I don’t remember seeing the sky blue last week. Most of us had thought the greyness above us was an effect of the onslaught of “Lando,” the strongest tropical cyclone so far to hit the country this year. It turned out that the haze that has blanketed Mindanao was caused by the forest fires that have been burning in Indonesia for months.

Parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore are choking up, and people, by the hundreds of thousands, are now suffering from respiratory ailments because of the toxic air blamed on slash-and-burn farming––the deliberate clearing of forests for agriculture––or specifically, on palm-oil plantations. Even Palau, Guam, and the Northern Marianas in the Pacific are reportedly affected now.

The situation in Indonesia is that the fires have gone underground, making these extremely difficult if not, nearly impossible to put out. Its rare wildlife is also under threat.

Late last week, as the haze in Mindanao became thicker, health officials sounded alarm bells even as experts from Pagasa confirmed that there were “solid tiny particles” in the smog. The regional director of the Environment Management Bureau (EMB) in northern Mindanao, Sabdullah Abubacar, downplayed the effects of Indonesia’s fires on the air quality here although he admitted that the Bureau’s monitoring station in Iligan showed that the level of pollutants in the air that we breathe “slightly” exceeded the government standard of 75 micro grams per cubic meter in Oct. 18 and again, in Oct. 22. Slight or not, the fact is that it breached the government’s acceptable level.

I find the situation really alarming given a report by the environmental World Resources Institute (WRI) that shows that the amount of carbon being spewed by Indonesia into the atmosphere every day since September is way beyond the daily output of the entire US which is the No. 2 greenhouse gas emitter in the world next to China.

The bad news is that experts are seeing this situation, aggravated by the El Nino-caused bone-dry conditions, to persist in Southeast Asia for at least another month––and there is nothing we can do about it. No government––especially not the Philippines––is prepared for anything like this.

Pastilan.