Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 10 2008 (IPS) – The northeast of Brazil, known for its droughts and poverty, has been drenched by torrential rains since early March. Floods have left over 400,000 people homeless and 33 dead, but the abnormal conditions are not due to global warming, according to meteorologists.
Rare rainy seasons like this one have been observed since the 19th century, whenever the cyclical La Niña climate phenomenon occurs, bringing cooler surface waters to the Pacific ocean and warmer temperatures to the Atlantic, said Lincoln Alves, a meteorologist at the Centre for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies (CPTEC).
This combination of ocean conditions favours the formation of a low pressure belt on land in the equatorial region, known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone, with hot, humid winds which bring cloud masses and cause heavier than normal rainfall in March and April in the northernmost sector of the Brazilian northeast.
Other factors pushed this meteorological system further south this year, and prolonged it, causing unusually intense rainfall in six of the nine northeastern Brazilian states, the expert told IPS.
The latest report from the National Civil Defence Secretariat (SEDEC), on Wednesday afternoon, said 415,691 people were affected by the floods in 250 northeastern municipalities. Nearly one-third of them have had to flee their homes and take shelter in other houses, schools or churches.
The state of Paraíba has been the hardest hit, with 88 municipalities under water, 26 fatalities, some 14,500 people evacuated and 1,298 homes destroyed. Within Paraíba, Sousa is one of the districts that have suffered the greatest damage.
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We had floods and heavy rains in 1974 and 1985, but nothing like this, said lawyer Daniel Gadelha, who resigned as head of the mayor s cabinet in Sousa on Apr. 1 to run for city councillor in the October elections. I live in the centre of the city, and my house alone was spared from flooding, because of the height of its floor level. The street was under half a metre of water, he told IPS.
The two rivers that cross the municipality burst their banks, leaving thousands of families isolated in the rural areas of the district. They are being rescued by a traffic police helicopter, with the help of 80 soldiers.
Some 3,696 people were left homeless in several flooded quarters, according to SEDEC, while the state government puts the figure at 4,196.
Sousa is a big producer of large quantities of bananas and green coconuts, containing coconut milk which is popular in Brazil, but a large part of the crops have been destroyed by the flooding. The rivers are a natural advantage for the municipality as they are used for irrigation, but now they have become the bane of our lives, Gadelha complained.
I ve never seen so much rain in my life, said Lindinalva Alencar, who was born and lives in the neighbouring city of Pombal, where 2,000 people were evacuated because of flooding. We re used to drought in the Sertao (the semiarid hinterland of the northeast), she said, gazing at the flooded lower districts with a disbelieving look.
Hundreds of tons of food and large quantities of medicines are being distributed by civil defence personnel to affected towns in the six states. Virus, parasite and respiratory infections and minor injuries are making stepped-up medical efforts necessary in the whole area.
The rains are easing off, but now the health authorities fear epidemics of dengue, following the one in Rio de Janeiro that has already claimed at least 79 lives.
Floods are serious because the cities are not built to cope with intense rainfall, especially in the semi-arid region, where the constant threat is just the opposite, lack of water, said Alves, who forecasts that the rain will continue into May, but at a lower intensity.
Soils in the Sertao absorb water poorly, which encourages torrential water flow over the surface, he added.
There is no regular cycle that would allow prediction of when an Intertropical Convergence Zone like this year s might recur, said Kelen Andrade, a meteorologist with CPTEC, which is attached to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and is located in Cachoeira Paulista, 190 kilometres from the southern Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.
The Intertropical Convergence Zone, also known as the monsoon trough, doldrums or Equatorial Convergence Zone, is a low-pressure belt that circles the globe at the equator, bringing rain clouds to Africa, the northeastern seaboard of Brazil and the eastern Amazon region, and extending into the Pacific, said Andrade, a meteorologist.
The last time it hit Brazil was in 2003, but this year it arrived more forcefully, came further south and was more persistent, Andrade said.
