City hit by heatwave, rain coming soon
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Consistent with the fairly unpredictable weather throughout many parts of the world over the past two weeks, Jakarta endured a bit of a heatwave as the average daily temperature over in that period reached 34 degrees Celsius, which was the highest recorded average temperature for the month of December since 1998.
Achmad Zakir, the chief of the forecasting department at the Meterology and Geophysics Body (BMG), said that the temperature was four degrees higher than the highest recorded December temperature in 1999 and 2000.
More importantly to farmers, the daily rainfall volume in December this year has decreased to half of that of last year's 130 millimeters.
The unseasonably high temperatures were apparently to blame for an explosion earlier this week when a bomb was inadvertently detonated in the attic of a house in South Jakarta, according to the police.
Some people claim that the heat has done damage to their air conditioners, while farmers in the region complained that the unpredictable weather was doing irreversible damage to their crops.
Most Jakartans have chosen to avoid the sun by staying indoors, either in their homes or offices during the last few weeks. One employee of a private financial company in Central Jakarta told The Jakarta Post that she would rather stay in her office than expose her skin to the scorching sun.
"This heat is crazy, far different than normal, it hurts my skin," said Emiria, adding that she must use her sun umbrella and apply copious amounts of sunblock on her exposed skin if she is required to be out in the sun for any length of time.
The BMG said that the heatwave was a result of several weather deviations which all came together this year, and not only affect Jakarta, but most of Java as well.
However, the BMG ruled out the possibility that the deviations were caused by the dreaded El Nino current, a freak weather phenomenon resulting from warm water ocean currents, which was to blame for severe droughts across Indonesia in the 1990s. The BMG did confirm that they were at a loss as to the exact cause of the current weather here, but offered a few suggestions.
According to BMG, the heatwave is mostly linked to the earth's current position in relation to the sun which is directly above the tropical regions of the southern hemisphere. Jakarta lies at about 7 degrees south latitude. In addition, the relative decrease in the temperature of the Indian Ocean is also being considered as a possible cause.
"At this time of year the earth tilts in such a way that is exposes the southern hemisphere at its most extreme angle toward the sun, consequently, these areas receive more sunlight and naturally become warmer," said Achmad.
Air pollution also contributes to increase the city's temperature. Polluted air that the city's industry and transportation produces cause a sort of localized greenhouse effect. What actually occurs is that the haze acts like the glass roof of a greenhouse and effectively traps latent heat from escaping into the upper atmosphere, thereby increasing the temperature all over the city as more and more heat gets trapped in.
Temperatures can also increase here following a decrease of the temperature on the surface of the Indian Ocean, which causes less water to be evaporated and form clouds. Thick gray clouds can obviously block the sun quite effectively, thereby keeping temperatures down, whereas the air pollution cannot block the sun, only the latent heat.
The average temperature at this time of year in the Indian Ocean is usually 30 degrees but it has dropped to 26.
Another weather deviation is the absence of tropical storms which usually occur in Carpenter Bay in Australian waters. This year, instead, the storms occurred in the northern hemisphere. The storms are important because they generate rain.
"This (the heatwave) is expected to last until the end of this month," Zakir said on Friday, adding that the rainy season would start here early in January.