Team 15 has restarted at Farmoor Reservoir
in Oxfordshire. It will run from 6pm to 8pm
on Thursdays and will cost £7.50 (seven
pounds and fifty pence), the same as last
year. Oxford Sailing Club will supply the kit
if you haven’t got your own. Level 1
windsurfing is a requirement, as this is not
a basic instruction session, but racing
improvement sessions. Pay & Play are
Oxford Sailing Club’s basic tuition sessions.
During winter they run on Sunday mornings
but with the lighter evenings they have
been switched to Tuesdays between 6 and
8. If you have any queries on either, call
Richard on 01865 863201.
Team 15 has restarted at Farmoor Reservoir
in Oxfordshire. It will run from 6pm to 8pm
on Thursdays and will cost £7.50 (seven
pounds and fifty pence), the same as last
year. Oxford Sailing Club will supply the kit
if you haven’t got your own. Level 1
windsurfing is a requirement, as this is not
a basic instruction session, but racing
improvement sessions. Pay & Play are
Oxford Sailing Club’s basic tuition sessions.
During winter they run on Sunday mornings
but with the lighter evenings they have
been switched to Tuesdays between 6 and
8. If you have any queries on either, call
H2O DEMO
Poole based H2O Sports is running a demo
session with the support of TotalOption.
You’ll be able to try the latest HiFly and
Exocet boards as well as Aerotech rigs. It
takes place on the afternoon of Friday 16th
June and all day Saturday 17th in Poole
Harbour. The tides will be ideal during
those two days so all that’s needed is a bit
of wind. More information either from H20
Sports on 01202 733744 or TotalOption on
01543 411333.
LESS WIND
Climate change experts have reported a
weakening in the trade winds which power
many of the world’s top windsurfing
locations. Climate change is thought to be
the culprit for the weakening of the Pacific
trade winds, known as the Walker
circulation, which have weakened by more
than 3% since the mid-nineteenth century,
report climate modellers led by Gabriel
Vecchi of the US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric. With greenhouse emissions
still climbing, Pacific winds could potentially
decline by more than 10% by the end of the
century, they predict in an article in the
journal Nature. The main venue which relies
on the Pacific trade winds is of course
Maui, where the steady trade winds and
rolling swells give some of the best
windsurfing in the world.
Short-term fluctuations in the Walker effect
give rise to an El Niño event every few
years. An overall weakening of the Walker
system could cause an increase in the
severity or frequency of these events, and
some experts even fear that the Pacific
could be plunged into a permanent El Niño,
disrupting the trades.
Global warming is thought to disrupt trade
winds because the rate of evaporation from
the ocean increases with increasing
temperature faster than the rate of
precipitation does. In the Walker circulation,
water evaporates from the warm waters of
the eastern Pacific and travels across on
the trade winds to Southeast Asia, where it
rises and feeds rain. The dry air then heads
east again at a higher altitude, completing
the cycle. But as sea temperatures rise, the
increase in rainfall cannot keep pace with
the increase in evaporation. This means
that moist air gets stalled, and the winds in
both directions weaken.
Vecchi and his colleagues studied records
of sea-level atmospheric pressure from
1861 to 1992, with some of the old data
from Royal Navy records. Because winds
are driven by differences in atmospheric
pressure, the difference between pressures
on the two sides of the Pacific indicates the
strength of the winds. They found the data
showed a decline in winds of around 3%,
with the trend most marked over roughly
the last 50 years of the study. Computer
simulations backed up the findings, and
gave a continuing weakening of the trade
winds as global warming continues. This
probably means worsening conditions in
the Hawaiian islands.
Richard on 01865 863201.
