Let me be clear, I and my fellow Malaysians are used to warm even hot weather, but this is going to be another year of bumper sales for air conditioners. The last time it was this hot was in 2009, an El Nino year. The difference this time is that it feels more like a tipping point of what we can bear. In 2009 we didn't complain half as much. The scorcher this year is making us keep our air conditioners turned on at home almost throughout the day. This has caused Malaysia's Ministry of Energy to come out with an advisory to keep intense home energy consumption to non-peak hours. I remember in the 70's when the government TV used to air ads on tips to be energy conservative.
The biggest energy guzzlers those days was the iron. So they would advise people to iron all their washed clothes from the day at one go at night . The big no-no was to turn the iron on for only one or two pieces of clothing during the day. Those days only very rich people had air-conditioning and electric hot water heaters. In the 70's Malaysia just didn't have the electrical generation capacity it has today, so conservation was due to that. To think that we are back to the same old advise but this time its not just ironing but air-conditioning. Turn off air conditioning in homes in the day because the generators are running over capacity at more than 17,000 Megawatts/day. We didn't have this problem in 2009, then again this is the strongest El Nino on record so it shouldn't be surprising.
Usually El Nino also spells drought in South East Asia. During the 1998 El Nino Peninsular Malaysia was hit by the worst drought it had seen in decades. This time around though the drought concentrated in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia, the state of Johor. It may still be too early to wave the concern of a drought away especially since record high temperatures can dry up the land quite fast and logging activities in watershed areas that feed most of Malaysia's cities continue unabated.
Delay is also the game El Nino 2016 is playing in parched California, USA. Hit by a mega drought Californians who were eagerly waiting for El Nino rains in February had to wait till March to see much desired precipitation. It looks like they are going to get what they wished for, a little late thats all.
El Nino's direct influence on the weather is on a waning course and by April's end it should be done. This heating trend of the eastern equatorial Pacific is generally followed by a welcomed cooling trend called the La Nina. Scientists will be hawk-eyed when it comes to measure the extent of the cooling to see if global warming will have any impact on this phenomenon as it most definitely had on El Nino 2015-2016.
The biggest energy guzzlers those days was the iron. So they would advise people to iron all their washed clothes from the day at one go at night . The big no-no was to turn the iron on for only one or two pieces of clothing during the day. Those days only very rich people had air-conditioning and electric hot water heaters. In the 70's Malaysia just didn't have the electrical generation capacity it has today, so conservation was due to that. To think that we are back to the same old advise but this time its not just ironing but air-conditioning. Turn off air conditioning in homes in the day because the generators are running over capacity at more than 17,000 Megawatts/day. We didn't have this problem in 2009, then again this is the strongest El Nino on record so it shouldn't be surprising.
Usually El Nino also spells drought in South East Asia. During the 1998 El Nino Peninsular Malaysia was hit by the worst drought it had seen in decades. This time around though the drought concentrated in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia, the state of Johor. It may still be too early to wave the concern of a drought away especially since record high temperatures can dry up the land quite fast and logging activities in watershed areas that feed most of Malaysia's cities continue unabated.
Delay is also the game El Nino 2016 is playing in parched California, USA. Hit by a mega drought Californians who were eagerly waiting for El Nino rains in February had to wait till March to see much desired precipitation. It looks like they are going to get what they wished for, a little late thats all.
El Nino's direct influence on the weather is on a waning course and by April's end it should be done. This heating trend of the eastern equatorial Pacific is generally followed by a welcomed cooling trend called the La Nina. Scientists will be hawk-eyed when it comes to measure the extent of the cooling to see if global warming will have any impact on this phenomenon as it most definitely had on El Nino 2015-2016.
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