The rainy season that is ending brought above-average precipitation this year, the executive administrator of the National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics (INMG), Denise de Pina, told Lusa today.
“The climatological average for the period 1991-2020 is 240 millimeters and the average since that year is 278 millimeters, that is, slightly above the order of 15%”, he said.
The numbers match the forecasts that pointed to a season with normal or above-average rainfall.
As in other years, Santo Antão (average of 495 mm) was the island with the most rain and Sal the driest, with the average accumulated precipitation being limited to a height of 30 millimeters.
The country is only expected to receive rain again in nine months, except in higher places, so the precipitation that usually falls between July and October is crucial for part of agricultural production and pastures, as well as for renewing springs.
This year was characterized by later rains.
Although the season started on July 8th, within the usual interval, “a long period of drought” followed, explained Denise de Pina, a phase that would only be reversed in September and October.
Meteorologists are studying the influence of a new oceanic phenomenon.
“This year there was an unprecedented phenomenon” similar to ‘La Niña’, but in the Atlantic Ocean, said the meteorologist.
The name is often given to a cyclical cooling of the Pacific Ocean, which then influences atmospheric currents around the world.
“This year there were colder waters than usual in the Atlantic and perhaps this conditioned” the rainy season in Cape Verde, meaning that precipitation occurred later, when the sea warmed enough to increase humidity, creating clouds .
That unprecedented occurrence is “under study” to try to understand “its origins and frequency”, he added.
With the end of the rainy season, the country now enters the dry phase, according to the annual pattern.
From November until March, there is a likelihood of dry haze occurring, days with a greater concentration of dust from the Sahara desert, circulating from Africa to the Atlantic, with Cape Verde under this natural path through the atmosphere.
