GETTING TO BE HOTTER

‘Weak’ El Niño adds to summer heat

Children from barangay Pasil and Suba, Cebu City cool off with a dip in the waters off the Pasil fish port. (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA)

Feeling warmer  these past few days?

It’s just beginning.

Cebu will experience more hot weather when summer officially starts before the end of March, the state weather bureau Pagasa said yesterday.

Combined with a mild form of El Niño, Cebuanos will have more reason to sweat.

“But we cannot expect temperatures to reach more than 36.4 degrees Celsius since it is still a weak El Niño,” Pagasa Mactan chief Alfredo Quiblat told Cebu Daily News.

Based on their records, Cebu experienced a high of 36.4° C  during an El Niño on May 30, 1979.

Yesterday was still 26.8 degrees with no rainfall in Cebu.

In the past few days, Quiblat said the temperature starts to rise at 9 a.m. and reaches its peak at 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Peak

A weak El Niño in the first part of 2015  was predicted by Pagasa since last year.

Engr. Oscar Tabada, chief meteorologist of Pagasa-Mactan said the temperature started rising in February.

“We already observed the blistering temperature but what we feel in March is the peak. We are expecting the effects of El Niño to be more felt not only in April, but until May,” he said during yesterday’s Cebu Media Forum.

Tabada said air temperature is expected to rise further in April with an  average temperature forecast to reach  34 degrees Celsius.

For March so far, Tabada said Pagasa recorded an average  27 to 28 degrees Celsius  but there were spikes on some days that reached 32 degrees Celsius.

The Department of Science and Technology’s Project Noah projected temperatures in Cebu City to hover at 29 degrees Celsius at 9 a.m. starting yesterday until Tuesday this week.

Temperatures at 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. will range from 29 to 31 degrees starting yesterday until Tuesday this week.

According to Accuweather.com, the temperatures for Cebu will range from a low 23 degrees to as high as 30 to 31 degrees on Wednesday this week.

Drier than average

Warmer weather means a water shortage which would affect crops and dried, cracked soil.

El Niño” refers to the abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical sections of the Pacific Ocean which occurs every three to five years.

The phenomenon, which Quiblat said Pagasa noticed since last December, leads to drier-than-average conditions on one side of the Pacific and rainy conditions on the opposite coast.

Other effects brought by El Niño are rainfall anomalies and changes in storm intensity and track, which usually occur in northern Luzon or heading towards Japan.

Quiblat said  summer officially begins when there is a gradual increase of temperature in nearly every part of the country.