SEAWATCH Peru
OCEANOR monitors El-Niño
The El Niño phenomenon, of which much has been spoken over the last few years will now be monitored by "El Instituto del Mar del Perú" (IMARPE) and the Hydrographic Service of the Peruvian Navy with the help of OCEANOR's technology.Over the last few years, many articles have been written by the media concerning EL Niño. El Niño marks the arrival of warmer water on the coasts of South America. It is known to influence the climate over much of the world. Its impact has been detected in California as stormy weather, drought catastrophes in Asia, reduction of fish stocks in Peru and Chile, as well as rough weather, storms and drought in many parts of the world.
El Niño has enormous consequences on the economy, particularly in South America, raw material prices have fluctuated wildly over the past few years, and this has made remedial action against the economic crisis in Asia very difficult.
It is estimated that in 1982-1983, the El Niño caused damage of around 25 billion dollars. Damage caused by the last El Niño in 1987-1988 was even worse.
The cause of these unpredictable climatic changes is still unclear, and theories are many. In the past few years, greenhouse gases have also entered the equation. In the meantime, it is agreed that there is not enough documentation to say something concrete about the connection of these different causes.
That is the reason why Peru is now beginning with a large and long term project to obtain more in-depth knowledge about El Niño. With financing from the World Bank, Peru will invest more than 1.2 billion Norwegian crowns in this program. One of the first projects will be an oceanographic monitoring program off the Peruvian coast. The aim of this project is to improve the forecasting capacity and assessment of El Niño for the prevention and mitigation of natural hazards in Peru. For this project, Peru has chosen OCEANOR's Seawatch buoy technology. The 6 buoys will be moored in depths reaching 5000 metres and will provide real time information about the meteorology, waves, temperature and salinity over the upper 500 m of the ocean.