The global monitoring of meteor-tropic effects: results for the region of North America and the Caribbean

At the end of the XX century Lecha and Delgado (1996) developed a method of biometeorological forecasts for Cuba, supported on the observed relationship between the occurrence of abrupt weather changes and the increase of the daily number of attentions by some chronic illnesses in the medical emergency services of the cities of Havana, Santa Clara and Sagua la Grande. The biometeorological forecasts are operational by means of the PronBiomet model, necessary to calculate the differences in 24 hours of the partial oxygen density of the air (PODA index), starting from the Global Forecast System objective forecasts of the atmospheric pressure at the sea level, the surface temperature and humidity of the air available on-line from (http://nomads.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/filter_gfs_hd.pl). The emission of biometeorological forecasts to the Cuban health institutions began experimentally in May of 2007 and their content underwent national validation during 3 years (2007-2009). Later on applications were made in Brazil (2010), Spain (2011) and Mexico (2012-2013), being obtained satisfactory results in all cases. The official service to the health institutions of Villa Clara province began in February of 2012 and so far, the 70 emitted forecasts have had acceptance inside the medical community and a good operational performance, given appropriately informative watches, warnings or alerts to the health system before the occurrence of significant meteor-tropic effects among the local population. However, the effectiveness has shown different success levels according to the illness: for the increases of bronchial asthma crises (97%), in the hypertensive crises (88%), with the brain-vascular illnesses (85%), the migraines (82%) and they were acceptable in the case of the cardiovascular diseases (75%). That is to say, with 3 successes every 4 emitted forecasts. The practical implementation of the service from the medical counterpart allowed the design and implementation of new procedures for the surveillance and treatment of the meteor-pathological reactions that occurs in the population, associated to abrupt weather changes or to the presence of other adverse environmental conditions. The procedures of surveillance and treatment of the arterial hypertension and the bronchial asthma attentions at Emergencies are already working, and they are in development new procedures for the attentions of medical urgencies due to brain-vascular and cardiovascular diseases. From the year 2008 the application of the model PronBiomet was extended to the regions of North America and the Caribbean, South America, Europe and oriental Asia, as well as personalized applications were programmed for isolated countries as Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Mexico, besides Cuba that also has a high resolution version of the model. It permited to develop the daily & global monitoring of the more significant meteor-tropic effects, using in all the cases the normalized scale of the PODA index like the main reference biometeorological indicator for analysis and comparisons among regions and populations. The monitoring of meteor-tropic effects is expressed in synoptic-statistical terms by means of the mean number of days with contrasting and very contrasting weather changes in boxes of 5 X 5 degrees of latitude and longitude, containing each one of them: 121 nodes of data obtained from the GFS database with a space resolution of 0.5 degree. The workspace for North America and the Caribbean extends from the 10°N up to 80°N and from the 40°W up to 120°W, with a total of 12,400 nodes with information of the atmospheric pressure reduced at the mean sea level, the surface temperature and humidity of the air, variables needed to calculate the partial oxygen density of the air and its differences in 24 hours (inter-daily) for each node of the region and every day during the period from January of 2008 until December of 2013. The results of the monitoring made for this geographical region indicate that it was happened a very remarkable increase of the biometeorological inter-daily contrasts during the last two years in a wide geographical area that extends from Alberta in Canada until the southern states of the USA. A clear regional difference exists in the spatial patterns of occurrence of inter-daily weather contrasts, corresponding to the increase of the PODA index (hyperoxia sensations) most of the extreme contrasts in the northern part of the area of more frequent contrasts; while in the southern portions of the area of maxima contrasts the decrease of the PODA index prevails (hypoxia sensations) such as the cause of occurrence of the more outstanding meteor-tropic effects. From the point of view of their genesis, the hyperoxia sensations are related with the influence of the polar air masses and the hypoxia sensations are in correspondence with the frequent formation of extratropicales cyclones, that coming from the Gulf of Mexico or near areas move through the southern and oriental states of the USA. The maximum nuclei of inter-daily weather contrasts are located and they displace, according to the season of the year, following the behavior of the main synoptic patterns, reaching in the quarter December-February their maximum decline to the south and in the summer (quarter June-August) their maximum northern decline. However in the tropical zone of the region and along the Pacific ocean coast, including most of the west coast of Mexico, the behavior and influence of the subtropical anticyclones and the presence of hurricanes and tropical waves determines the highest or smaller occurrence of inter-daily weather contrasts able to produce significant meteor-tropics effects. The increment of meteor-tropic impacts associated to intense winter storms on the USA and Canada during the winter 2013-2014 coincide with the remarkable increase of winter cyclones affecting Europe, especially Spain, France and UK. Also the presence of a "polar vortex" was observed in the half troposphere in the middle of the United States last winter 2013-2014. It favored the occurrence of significant biometeorological contrasts in the region. Such evidences may be early signals of a new global very meteor-tropic pattern of the general circulation of the atmosphere, that it would be consequence of the increasing unbalance of mass and energy through latitudes, derived from an increase, already physically perceptible, of the temperature of the whole climate system.