CRI听力:Weather Station to Track the Impact of El Nino in Peruvian Andes

On top of the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru, a station has been set up since 2003 to closely monitor weather conditions, including air temperature and humidity, radiation and wind speeds.

Researcher Douglas Hardy and his colleagues make a yearly trip to the Quelccaya Ice Cap to dig the weather station out of the snow at an altitude of almost 6,000 meters above sea level.

This year, Hardy and his team are looking at the readings very closely, as the current El Nino cycle in the Pacific is expected to peak by the end of this year.

"El Nino is driven by Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures, which we know are very closely correlated or related to temperatures through out the Andes, through Bolivia up through Peru, and typically when the Pacific sea surface temperatures are very warm, as they are during an El Nino, we have warm conditions on the mountains in the Andes as well as less precipitation."

Hardy and his research team are also interested to see what effect the peak of the current El Nino cycle may have on the ice caps in the Andes.

"Here we can make continues measurements at that same elevation halfway through the atmosphere and we can used that to correct and calibrate the satellite record, we can use that to relate to the (weather) balloon record, and then of course we can look at trends and see whether we have got warming at that particular elevation or cooling, just what kind of thing is going on with temperature and with humidity."

Forecasters in Peru and elsewhere along the tropics in South America are still waiting to see what impact the current El Nino cycle may have on the region.

Juan Carlos Bazo with Peru's national weather service says their best guess is the area may end up getting more rain.

"According to predictions from international agencies, the El Nino event will manifest a peak in the month of December. If so, and current conditions persist by years-end, the main consequences could be heavy rain mainly in the north of Peru."

Its been suggested the effects of El Nino cycles may speed up the loss of tropical ice caps, such as the one being studied in Peru.

A World Bank report issued in 2009 suggests the global climate change is already threatening to melt off the tropical glaciers in the Andes in the next 20-years.

The Andes mountain range in South America is already one of the driest places on earth.

For CRI, I am Luo Bin.