The end of the west season (Flores)
I rose, scowling, at 5:30 am for the ten hour bus ride to Bajawa. My mood was caused less by the thought of another long ride on a winding road in a van full of people and buckets of fish, than by the weather.
It had absolutely poured during the first my three days in Flores. And not some passive Vancouver Island drizzle, either. This was the stream from a high flow showerhead. Look up and risk a droplet the size of a small cat bruising your forehead. Sleep under a tin roof and experience hearing loss otherwise only possible from close-range artillery fire or a drum solo at a Def Leppard reunion concert.
The three day downpour turned out to be the last gasp of the wet season. That morning, it ended. The low dome of stratus clouds disappeared. The sky became a bright blue broken only by some high wispy cirrus clouds. It was the same each day for the next two weeks, the remainder of my time in Indonesia. If there was a brief shower during the night, they sky was clear again by morning.
The abrupt transition between seasons was a sight to behold. Immediately, crops began being harvested: corn and beans planted in October or November when the rains began to fall. Withered corn stalks began turning brown, usually left to fall and replenish the soil. The complaints about the rain also passed. Now everyone feared the blazing afternoon sun.
It is about as abrupt a shift in climate as one can imagine. And it happens every year. The big question here is whether it still happens at the same time. There is some talk in Flores about changes in the dynamics of the wet season, just as there was in Kiribati and Fiji. On my first day in Bajawa, I was told it never used to rain at all in April and that now it sometimes in rains in April but not in January, previously the height of the wet season.
As always, the anecdotal observations of weather trends are impossible to interpret. For every villager that says the rains last longer, there is one that says the rains end earlier, and another who says nothing has changed. To be objective, we must rely on recorded long-term observations in evaluating who among Goldilock's three climate scientists is correct [unintentional plug for increasing the funding of long-term climatic and ecological monitoring programs].
If there in fact has been a change in the dynamics, the duration or the intensity, of the wet season, the cause would be a matter of debate. It could be a consequence of global changes in climate, caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. It could be due to deforestation across the Indonesian archipelago, particularly on the massive island of Borneo. More likely, the cause would be multi-factorial, an obvious explanation usually smothered by the single-action bias that dominates much of public discourse and, rather pathetically, much of science.
A serious investigation of the wet season in Flores could take years, and still not unearth the subtle but crucial changes in the local ecology or culture. That is the challenge posed by the broad disturbances to complex systems, whether the atmosphere or the economy.
It would as wrong for me to run with one villager's claims of severe April rains and scream "climate change" as it is for the fiction writer Michael Chricton to cite a few obscure articles in the back of his novel "State of Fear" and scream climate change is a hoax. Both those who deny the changes occurring around us and those who profess to know the one and only solution should remember one thing. There is always a price to pay for hubris. The problem is, someone else often has to pay it.
It had absolutely poured during the first my three days in Flores. And not some passive Vancouver Island drizzle, either. This was the stream from a high flow showerhead. Look up and risk a droplet the size of a small cat bruising your forehead. Sleep under a tin roof and experience hearing loss otherwise only possible from close-range artillery fire or a drum solo at a Def Leppard reunion concert.
The three day downpour turned out to be the last gasp of the wet season. That morning, it ended. The low dome of stratus clouds disappeared. The sky became a bright blue broken only by some high wispy cirrus clouds. It was the same each day for the next two weeks, the remainder of my time in Indonesia. If there was a brief shower during the night, they sky was clear again by morning.
The abrupt transition between seasons was a sight to behold. Immediately, crops began being harvested: corn and beans planted in October or November when the rains began to fall. Withered corn stalks began turning brown, usually left to fall and replenish the soil. The complaints about the rain also passed. Now everyone feared the blazing afternoon sun.
It is about as abrupt a shift in climate as one can imagine. And it happens every year. The big question here is whether it still happens at the same time. There is some talk in Flores about changes in the dynamics of the wet season, just as there was in Kiribati and Fiji. On my first day in Bajawa, I was told it never used to rain at all in April and that now it sometimes in rains in April but not in January, previously the height of the wet season.
As always, the anecdotal observations of weather trends are impossible to interpret. For every villager that says the rains last longer, there is one that says the rains end earlier, and another who says nothing has changed. To be objective, we must rely on recorded long-term observations in evaluating who among Goldilock's three climate scientists is correct [unintentional plug for increasing the funding of long-term climatic and ecological monitoring programs].
If there in fact has been a change in the dynamics, the duration or the intensity, of the wet season, the cause would be a matter of debate. It could be a consequence of global changes in climate, caused by the emission of greenhouse gases. It could be due to deforestation across the Indonesian archipelago, particularly on the massive island of Borneo. More likely, the cause would be multi-factorial, an obvious explanation usually smothered by the single-action bias that dominates much of public discourse and, rather pathetically, much of science.
A serious investigation of the wet season in Flores could take years, and still not unearth the subtle but crucial changes in the local ecology or culture. That is the challenge posed by the broad disturbances to complex systems, whether the atmosphere or the economy.
It would as wrong for me to run with one villager's claims of severe April rains and scream "climate change" as it is for the fiction writer Michael Chricton to cite a few obscure articles in the back of his novel "State of Fear" and scream climate change is a hoax. Both those who deny the changes occurring around us and those who profess to know the one and only solution should remember one thing. There is always a price to pay for hubris. The problem is, someone else often has to pay it.
