2020 Was S’pore’s 8th Hottest Year Since 1929; Southwest Monsoon was 3rd Wettest Since 1981

Picture a bright sunny morning. You are decked out in your best exercise clothes and ready to explore the glorious nature our garden city has to offer after two months of cabin fever.

Suddenly, it starts raining. You forgot your umbrella. There are no shelters in sight. The things in your bag are ruined, and so is your day. Your disappointment is immeasurable. 

If that happened to you especially often last year, it’s not just bad luck. June and September 2020 reported the highest monthly rainfall out of the whole year, according to a report by the Meteorological Service Singapore.

As TODAYonline reports, June 2020 experienced a monthly total rainfall of 310.1mm, while September 2020 recorded 302.4mm, increasing by 99% and 63% from their long-term monthly averages respectively. 

2020 was also reported to be the eighth warmest year since records began in 1929, with an annual mean temperature of 28°C.

La Nina and Sumatran Squalls

The anomalous precipitation conditions can be attributed to an atmospheric phenomenon called “La Nina”, which is a phase of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. 

Yeah, if you are wondering if the names are in English… they really aren’t.

La Nina, meaning “little girl” in Spanish, is a recurrent climate pattern that occurs every few years whereby the trade winds that blow from the eastern Pacific to the western Pacific (that’s us) are stronger than usual. 

As winds travel, they bring large quantities of warm surface water from the eastern Pacific towards us, too. This leads to a large concentration of some of the world’s warmest ocean water near Australia and Southeast Asia.

Clearly, this globe-trotting water doesn’t need quarantine in the age of COVID-19, because the influx of warm water readily evaporates and forms copious amounts of rain clouds. 

Then they contribute plentifully to Singapore’s fight for water independence from Malaysia.

Sumatran squalls also have a role to play, which are essentially winds that pass over the Sumatran mountains at night and form lines of thunderstorms that bring substantial rainfall to Singapore in the morning.

They are, in fact, the reason behind the autumn-like temperatures on several occasions late last year—rain clouds covered Singapore for much of the day, waving goodbye to the sun and the heat it brings. 

The closest we had to an overseas vacation last year.

To read more about La Nina (and it’s brother El Nino), click here.

Let’s Not Forget About Global Warming, Either… 

It seems like we can’t talk about temperature without climate change. The long-term trend of global warming factors into the higher-than-usual temperatures last year despite occasional respites of sweater weather. 

As CNA reports, each decade from the 1980s onwards has experienced a higher temperature than the previous by about 0.25°C, and the pattern is only expected to continue.

Since La Nina usually increases precipitation in Singapore, a hotter La Nina year in the future can lead to greater risks of heat illnesses ranging from heat rashes to heat strokes, especially for more vulnerable parts of the population like the elderly.

Rainfall can also become more intense as warmer weathers promote the evaporation of seawater, exposing us to greater dangers of flash floods. One occurred literally yesterday.

Of course, Singapore can adapt to these new threats with a range of innovative measures, like the use of green spaces and ventilation corridors to keep temperatures tolerable, and even porous road surfaces to reduce the risks of flooding. 

But if you are reading this article in air conditioning set to 16°C… you know what to do.

Feature Image: Chayathorn Lertpanyaroj / Shutterstock.com