Dry season is upon us, says weather agency

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

It's midday in Jakarta. Bus passengers are fanning themselves with newspapers, while people in cars turn up their air conditioners to the maximum.

As the temperature hits 35 degrees Celsius, the dry season has begun, not only in Jakarta, but also in 70 other areas, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG) said on Monday.

Among the affected areas are Lampung, Bandung, Semarang, Lombok, central and southeastern Maluku as well as Jayapura.

Particularly hot days are normal at the start of the dry season, the agency said.

The BMG earlier predicted that this year's dry season would start around May or June. "The start of it differs in the 220 regions that we cover," BMG's climate information division officer Deddy Sutjahyono told The Jakarta Post.

The dry season will peak in June for more than 80 percent of areas in Indonesia, the BMG reported.

Deddy said the increasing intensity of the Southeastern Monsoon wind from the Australian continent would increase the temperature in Indonesian cities.

"The warm wind hampers the formation of clouds, which means there is nothing to protect us from the harsh rays of the sun," he said. "That's why it seems hotter than usual."

He said that according to the agency's data, Jakarta's temperature during the last five years had been higher than over the previous five-year period.

"Global warming in Jakarta and other big cities across the country has been triggered by denser residential areas and changes to the ecosystem," he said.

Deddy said that in this year's dry season, a light El Nino -- a flow of unusually warm surface water from South America -- would occur, causing a possible drought in central areas of the country, such as Bali, East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, Sumbawa Island and Central Maluku.

Meanwhile, due to the El Nino, the western part of Indonesia would have more rain.

The BMG also reported that this year's rain level would be lower than last year's. "This requires anticipation, particularly in areas where low rainfall has been forecast, in order to manage water shortages," Deddy said.

Last month, the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT) reportedly conducted cloud seeding to trigger rain in drought-prone areas of Central Java, together with the Ministry of Public Works' directorate general of water resources.

The Rp 6 billion cloud seeding project would be supported by the scheduling of cultivation activities so that each areas' water needs were met, the BPPT website reported.

Meanwhile, for eastern Indonesian areas such as Bali, Lombok, West and East Nusa Tenggara, the BPPT was still waiting for instructions from the Ministry of Public Works to conduct a similar project.

"There has not been any instruction yet, and since we are not the ones given access to the funding for the project, we will have to wait," the BPPT's head of artificial rain projects Asep Karsidi said.(003)