There are fifteen days of the International Panel on climate change (IPCC) published its fifth assessment report, weight volume one million or more words that recalls what it said in its fourth assessment report published six years ago; namely that experts are now some 95 percent, versus 90 percent before the observed warming of the planet is caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) mainly due to fuel combustion fossils of man. After the inevitable fanfare media launch and predictable arguments for and against the main competitors - the anthropogenic (human) warming lobby and their nemesis, the deniers of climate change - the media has gone remarkably quiet on the question may reflect the public disenchantment with the sterile debate.
The weather is an important and every day of our life and if you are British, varies from being a conversational gambit to a obsession. In Indonesia, in October, and in normal circumstances, citizens who have long suffered from Jakarta would be ready for the start of the rainy season, which would see a few showers early in the month with heavier showers, more frequent late that season, which gets well and truly underway in November. For generations, the West Java farmers began preparing the land for rice cultivation of wetlands in October in anticipation of the start of heavy rains in November.
That was until just a few decades, when the beginning of the rainy season has become less regular and more unpredictable. The start of the rainy season and the likelihood and timing of torrential rains that cause deep and prolonged flooding in the capital are much more important for farmers and city dwellers that rising 0.05 0 Celsius the average surface temperature of the world that may or may not happen in the next decade if we continue burning fossil fuels.
What the IPCC tell us about the likely regional climate variability report, because we all live in specific regions, each with climate different area ranging from icy arctic conditions, through the hot, humid tropical, with belts of climates of the temperate zone between the two, with leaven deserts, mountains and, in the case of Indonesia, thousands of islands? (In the latest update of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification system, 31 different climate classes are recognized.) The report really does not say much that will help is the Javanese farmers predict the onset of the rainy season or time heavy tropical downpours. What he finds that dry areas are likely to receive less rain and wet more rain seasons. Well, it seems to happen in Lebak Bulus
Among my many hobbies, it is especially British and somewhat eccentric !; I measure daily rainfall in Lebak Bulus in my garden, South Jakarta made continuously since 1992, a record period covering 22 years. I use a calibrated rain gauge metric that is in an open position, free from bias influences such as overhanging trees or shrubs. This in itself does not make me an expert on weather or climate, but since I studied meteorology and climatology at university under graduate and post graduate studies studies of natural sciences, and worked as a soil scientist for 40 years at least half of the regional climates of the world, it is probably more me qualified to both understand and objectively comment on the great debate "global warming" or, as it is now called, the debate "climate change" that the thousands of bloggers of both persuasions, who regularly pontificate on this extremely complex issue, with little or no experience in the relevant basic sciences.
The trend for the past 22 years in Lebak Bulus, as shown in the graph, was for wetter, wet seasons wetter dry season with less dry months (< 100 mm). The wettest three years in 22 years of record (> 3000 mm) was in 2010, 2011 and 2012. This year seems to continue this trend, with some 2,837 mm of rain falling between January and the end of September. The average rainfall for the months of October to December between 1992 and 2012 (21 years) is 730 mm /- 258mm so it is more than 99 percent certain that we will receive over 3000 mm of rain in Lebak Bulus in 2013. in these three very wet years, there was actually no dry season in south Jakarta and many farmers complained of crops lost due to excessive rain during the months of June to September.
The actual mechanisms causing climate it is probably related to the strength and tracking monsoons NE and SW; seasonal winds (NE, NW, SW and SE winds) that drive weather systems in the tropics, drifting south occasional cyclone or typhoon Asian belt northeast, and the balance in the last eight years conditions La Nina in the Pacific ocean, which may or may not be influenced to some extent by the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. To be fair, the most maligned general circulation models (GCM), which form the basis for long-term predictions of the IPCC on climate globally, most models, despite not having foreseen stabilization global warming in recent years 17 to predict the occurrence of major changes in precipitation patterns in the Asian monsoon areas, with many areas in the humid tropics, including Indonesia, receiving over rain more frequently and in heavier showers.
Whatever the cause of the variations in time, it is clear that local climates are changing, some for the best some for the worst. It is not a new phenomenon, but simply reflects the cyclical variations in weather and its longer-term counterpart, the climate that have occurred over the centuries, millennia and millions of years. Higher levels of carbon dioxide levels may play a role, particularly in helping re-green the planet, but the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere and its interface with the oceans and land masses, is very complex and only partially understood, the last IPCC report admits reluctantly. The application of the Chief Scientist in the UK there is a decade that climate science is settled is a long way from the truth, but while Wiltshire farmers say, "there no debt so surely met as wet to dry and wet to dry ".