Английская Википедия:Garúa
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Lang is a Spanish word meaning drizzle or mist. Although used in other contexts in the Spanish-speaking world, Шаблон:Lang most importantly refers to the moist cold fog that blankets the coasts of Peru, southern Ecuador, and northern Chile, especially during the southern hemisphere winter. In Chile, a similar fog is called camanchaca. Шаблон:Lang brings mild temperatures and high humidity to a tropical coastal desert. It also provides moisture from fog and mist to a nearly-rainless region and permits the existence of vegetated fog oases, called lomas.
While fog and drizzle are common in many coastal areas around the world, the prevalence and persistence of Шаблон:Lang and its impact on climate and the environment make it unique.
Formation
The cold waters of the Humboldt Current are responsible for both the coastal deserts and the Шаблон:Lang along the coasts of Peru and Chile from latitudes 5° to 30° South, a north-south distance of Шаблон:Convert. Between those latitudes, the Humboldt Current hugs the coastline bringing mild temperatures and high humidity to a hyper-arid region. The cold waters of the Humboldt create an inversion, the air near the ocean surface being cooler than the air above, contrary to most climatic situations. The trade winds blow the cool air and fog westward over coastal areas, where the fog coalesces into drizzle and mist, the Шаблон:Lang.[1]
Шаблон:Lang is a dense fog that does not produce rain.[2] The water droplets in the fog measure between 1 and 40 microns across, too fine to form rain.[3]
Impact on climate
The impact of the Humboldt Current and the Шаблон:Lang it produces is substantial. Lima, Peru near sea level and located at 12° south latitude is in the tropics and would in most climatic situations have average temperatures of Шаблон:Convert or higher in every month of the year. By contrast, Lima has monthly average temperatures that range from Шаблон:Convert (January through March) in the warmest months and Шаблон:Convert in the coolest months of July through September, the months in which the Шаблон:Lang is most frequent.[4]
The impact on sunshine is even more substantial. Annually, only 34 percent of daylight hours in Lima have sunshine. On average, July and August receive less than one hour a day of sunshine.[5] Lima receives only 1,230 hours of sunshine annually. By contrast, London, notoriously cloudy and foggy, gets 1,573 hours of sunshine annually and New York City receives 2,535 hours of sunshine annually.[6] The climate of Lima is typical of the coasts of Peru and northern Chile.
The omnipresent Шаблон:Lang clouds and mist in winter in Lima led the nineteenth-century American author, Herman Melville to call Lima “the strangest, saddest city thou cans’t see.” (Twenty-first century Lima, however, has a flourishing tourist trade and has been described as having a "hidden loveliness.") [7]
The average annual precipitation for most of the 1700-mile north-south desert coast is less than Шаблон:Convert and some areas may go without rain for many years. Only the moisture condensed from the garùa clouds -- plus occasional El Niño events -- enables islands of vegetation to be present in the lomas dotted up and down the Peruvian and Chilean coasts. Except for the lomas and river valleys draining the higher and more humid Andes the coastal desert is almost completely barren of vegetation.[8]
The Шаблон:Lang extends only a few kilometers inland, dissipating over land especially where it coalesces against mountain slopes at elevations of Шаблон:Convert to Шаблон:Convert, the altitudes at which the vegetated lomas are found.[9]
Fog collection
In a water-scarce desert land, water is being captured from the moisture-laden Шаблон:Lang. In Chile, in 1985, scientists devised a fog collection system of polyolefin netting to capture the water droplets in the fog to produce running water for villages in these otherwise desert areas. The Camanchacas Project installed 50 large fog-collecting nets on a mountain ridge, which captured some 2% of the water in the fog.[10]
In 2005, another installation of panels of Шаблон:Convert produced Шаблон:Convert per square meter per day.[3]
In Peru, as part of an effort to preserve the fragile ecosystem of the Шаблон:Lang-watered lomas, conservation groups have installed fog-catching nets in the Atiquipa District to capture water and help the 80 families who live within the area to expand agriculture, primarily of olives.[11]
References
See also
- ↑ Beresford-Jones, David et al (2015), "Re-evaluating the resource potential of lomas fog oasis environments for Preceramic hunter-gatherers under past-ENSO modeson the south coast of Peru," Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 129, p. 198
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ 3,0 3,1 Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ "Lima, Peru" http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather.php3s=82648, accessed 10 Aug 2017
- ↑ "Sunshine and daylight hours in Lima, Peru," http://www.lima.climatemps.com/sunlight.php
- ↑ "London", http://www.climatedata.eu/climate.php?loc=ukxx0085&lang=enhttpsШаблон:Dead link; "New York", https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-sunshine-by-city.php, accessed 10 Aug 2017
- ↑ "The hidden loveliness of Lima", The Times, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-hidden-loveliness-of-lima-mgxkblm0vgw, accessed 11 Aug 2017
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ Beresford-Jones et al, p. 198
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite web
- ↑ Шаблон:Cite web
