Puerto Ricans face punishing drought amid economic slump

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150806/cb-puerto-rico-drought-1eb2e192f5.html

Aug 6, 10:38 AM (ET)
By DANICA COTO

Puerto Ricans are learning to live without water on an island that already was suffering an economic crisis.

A severe drought is forcing businesses to temporarily close, public schools to cancel breakfast service and people to find creative ways to stay clean amid sweltering temperatures.

Rationing rules that had meant water coming through the pipes only one day out of three will increase the cutoff to one day out of four starting next week, government officials say.

•••••

Forecasters blame the lack of rain on El Nino, a warming of the tropical Pacific that affects global weather and has led to a quiet Atlantic hurricane season, which began in June and ends in November.
[See below for info on the frequency of El Ninos. They are not uncommon.]

•••••

The drought is one of the worst in the U.S. territory's history. July was the fourth driest month in the capital of San Juan since 1898, the year Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States. Only 1.60 inches (4 centimeters) of rain fell last month, and forecasters predict several more weeks and possibly months of dry conditions.

More than 20 percent of Puerto Rico is in extreme drought and an additional 45 percent is in a severe one, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, which says 2.8 million people are affected.

•••••

If Puerto Rico does not receive significant rainfall this week, tens of thousands of clients who depend on the Carraizo reservoir will get water only every fourth day starting next week, said Alberto Lazaro, executive director of the water and sewer company.

•••••

But other Caribbean spots also are struggling with drought, including the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and St. Lucia. It is the region's worst drought in five years.

•••••

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o#Recent_occurrences

•••••

During the last several decades the number of El Niño events increased,[50] although a much longer period of observation is needed to detect robust changes.[51] The question is, or was, whether this is a random fluctuation or a normal instance of variation for that phenomenon or the result of global climate changes as a result of global warming. A 2014 study reported a robust tendency to more frequent extreme El Niños, occurring in agreement with a separate recent model prediction for the future.[5][6]

Several studies of historical data suggest the recent El Niño variation is linked to global warming but there is no consensus on this aspect.[citation needed] For example, even after subtracting the positive influence of decadal variation (which is shown to be possibly present in the ENSO trend),[52] the amplitude of the ENSO variability in the observed data still increases, by as much as 60% in the last 50 years.[53]

It may be that the observed phenomenon of more frequent and stronger El Niño events occurs only in the initial phase of the global warming, and then (e.g., after the lower layers of the ocean get warmer, as well), El Niño will become weaker than it was.[54] It may also be that the stabilizing and destabilizing forces influencing the phenomenon will eventually compensate for each other.[55] More research is needed to provide a better answer to that question. However, a new 2014 model appearing in a research report indicated unmitigated global warming would particularly affect the surface waters of the eastern equatorial Pacific and possibly double extreme El Niño occurrences.[5][6]

•••••

ENSO conditions have occurred at two- to seven-year intervals for at least the past 300 years, but most of them have been weak.

•••••

Major ENSO events were recorded in the years 1790–93, 1828, 1876–78, 1891, 1925–26, 1972–73, 1982–83 and 1997–98, with the 1997–98 episode being one of the strongest ever.