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Peru studies climate riddle
06/10/2008 11:09 - (SA)
Lima - Scientists are using everything
from a yellow submarine to weather balloons and special
airplanes to solve a climate conundrum: why is Peru getting
colder while the rest of the world heats up?
Researchers from Europe, the United States and South
America started collecting reams of data this week from clouds,
the shoreline and deep underwater to try to figure out the
dynamics of the southeastern Pacific.
The area, home to a fifth of the world's fish stocks, plays
a crucial part in global weather patterns and scientists want
to discover why temperatures have dropped on the desert coast.
"Peru has a very important role in global climate," said
Alexis Chaigneau, a French scientist leading experiments in
Peru.
"Over the past 50 years, the Peruvian coast has gotten
colder, mainly because of stronger winds that have pulled up
the deep cold waters of the ocean current."
Most productive marine ecosystem
The Humboldt current, which flows north to Peru from the
frigid southern waters off Chile, is considered the world's
most productive marine ecosystem, in part because deep cold
waters rich in nutrients interact with the sun's energy to
create life.
For the next three months, everything from a small
satellite-controlled submarine to cloud-hugging airplanes will
feed computers with information on oxygen levels in the water,
temperature, salinity, wind speeds and current.
Along the way, they also hope to solve the riddles of the
famous El Nino and La Nina weather phenomenon that occur in the
southeastern Pacific - the periodic oscillations in surface
water temperatures that are linked to floods and droughts.
El Nino has also been blamed for interrupting the
upswelling of the current, causing fish stocks to crash in an
area where up to 20% of the world's fish are caught.
"We need to know more to understand how this will impact
fisheries," said Hector Soldi, chairman of Peru's marine
biology institute.
- Reuters
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