Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post
JAKARTA (JP): Jakartans have to wait longer for the rainy season this year as experts signaled Saturday that drought instead of normal wet season might come around this month.
The Meteorological and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said the recent heat in Jakarta had reached 36 degree Celsius, far higher than normal of below 32 degree during rainy season.
"This is the first-ever record of such a high heat in January. If it stays through January, we might have severe dry season instead," Achmad Zakir, the agency's head for weather forecastingdivision told The Jakarta Post.
Achmad said that the rain was absent as most of cumulus nimbus clouds were currently trapped above the South China sea.
"To make it worse, the clouds are then swept by strong winds. Thus, the sun's heat down directly without being filtered by the clouds," he said.
The agency recorded the highest temperature in Jakarta was 37 degree Celsius in October last year. Achmad said that wind velocity during rainy period was normally between five to 10 knots.
"However, it currently rises up to 25 knots. Jakartans must be aware of the strong wind that can topple trees or vulnerablestructures," he said.
The agency earlier predicted that the peak rainy season in Jakarta was between January and February with the intensity of over five consecutive days.
Floods however, had hit a number of provinces.
Zadrach L. Dupe, meteorologist at the Institute of Technology Bandung said that the recent heat in Greater Jakarta was no longer in normal level.
"It is a strange trend. I suspect it is a sign of 10-year cycle of which Jakarta may suffer severe dry season such as in 1997's El Nino phenomenon," he said.
The El Nino stopped the rains from reaching the country. It caused serious harvest failures, forest fires and health hazard.
The devastating drought destroyed some 300,000 hectares of forests and the haze disrupted the lives of millions of people the Southeast Asia region.
"The government needs to analyze it to determine whether the heat is only micro change in Jakarta area or not," he said.
Zadrach said that the serious environmental degradation mainly due to high urbanization trend contributed much to the extreme heat in Jakarta.
Jakarta experiences large daily fluxes in population -- home to an estimated 10 million people at night, its numbers swell to 12 million in the daytime.
Most of its green zones have been converted to the commercial premises or been illegally settled by poor migrants.
Of it 60,000 hectares of land Jakarta currently has only 5,911 ha of green areas or 9 percent. The administration has pledged increase green spaces of 9,156 hectares, or 13.94 percent by 2010.
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