Azores Situation Report Wednesday September 4th 2024
Family doctor coverage rate reaches 97% in São Miguel
According to the USISM management report, of the 150,277 users registered in the island’s health centres, only 4,331 did not have a family doctor at the end of 2023
The São Miguel Island Health Unit (USISM) presented in 2023 the highest rate of family doctor coverage in its history: of the more than 150 thousand registered users, 97% had a response at this level, leaving 4331 people without a family doctor.
Climatologist says Azores are not in an extreme situation
Portuguese climatology expert Eduardo Brito de Azevedo disagrees that the Azores are experiencing an unprecedented situation of “extreme drought”, considering that there is a balance in hydrological terms thanks to winter precipitation.
“The claim that we are experiencing an unprecedented drought is not quite true, in my opinion. Although August had a very significant anomaly in rainfall, in negative terms, in hydrological terms it is by no means the worst year in terms of water availability,” Brito de Azevedo told Lusa.
The Azores have recorded, particularly in the month of August, temperatures above normal summer values, with maximums of 29 and 30 degrees Celsius, along with low rainfall levels.
The retired specialist and professor – project manager of the Eastern North Atlantic (ENA), Graciosa Island ARM Facility, of the United States Department of Energy and the Los Alamos National Laboratory – stresses that “the fact that we have experienced a fairly long period of good weather does not mean that it is a period of extreme drought”.
The climatologist states that, in most of the Azores islands, there are no problems with water supply, which is ensured by winter, to supply the population.
“In agronomic terms, the month of August was, in fact, a month with a negative sign in terms of precipitation, with implications for agriculture, particularly for livestock fodder,” he says.
According to the environmental expert, this scenario is due to “the persistence of the Azores anticyclone, well located in the Atlantic”, which “has affected the weather”.
Brito de Azevedo states that “the air temperature anomaly between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees” is “particularly due to another anomaly, which is the temperature of the sea water on the surface, which was, particularly at the end of July and beginning of August, very significant and which should be a concern for all sectors that depend on the economy”.
“This anomaly in sea surface temperatures is what is giving a more worrying signal. The central Atlantic has warmed. In 2023, surface temperatures were the highest ever and, this year, this warming has continued particularly in the first months of the year,” explains the expert.
Brito de Azevedo points out that, “curiously, from July onwards, there is a tendency for some cooling, although a pocket of hot water remains in this area of the Azores, in the central Atlantic, which has also caused the air temperature to rise”.
The expert states that this situation brings “some unpredictability in terms of the future, particularly because the sea, no longer regulating air temperature, as happens in thermoregulation, being warmer, can bring about significant climate changes” with an impact on marine ecosystems and the composition of marine fauna and flora.
“Whether this is a situation that will continue or not is an aspect that climatology cannot yet answer”, says the scientist, who points out that the thermal anomaly “influences the generation and path of tropical storms”.
According to Brito de Azevedo, at the beginning of August, everything indicated that “it would be a very complicated season in terms of tropical storms, but from mid-August onwards there was a cooling of the sea water temperature in the equatorial zones, where hurricanes begin”.
Regarding climate change, the expert stated that “it is already being felt” and that it will “translate more into climate irregularity”, with “the seasonality that the Azores were used to having been lost, both in winter and summer”.