Ranohira, Madagascar
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Ranohira is located in Madagascar. Its current latitude is 22.5 degrees South, longitude 45.4 degrees East, and 2701 feet in elevation. Madagascar is located southeast of Africa in the Indian Ocean. But Ranohira wasn't always located in this spot. During the late early Cretaceous period Madagascar was in a much different location. The two graphs below will show you Madagascars current location (top map located off the coast of Africa, orange land mass) and previous location (bottom map: still located off the coast of Africa connected to India).
Source: worldpress.org
Source:wikispaces.com
Notice the giant difference in the location of Ranohira. It is much lower in latitude and located more towards the center of the Earth. With being in such a different location you can only assume that this had an affect on the climate. Below you can view a climate map of the world 100 million years ago.
Source:scotese.com
During the late early cretaceous period the climate of Madagascar (off the southeast side of Africa with the two green indicator dots) was warm temperate. Today the climate of Madagascar is a mix between Arid steppe hot arid climate and warm temperate fully humid climate.
Source:priroda.cz
Here is a climography expressing Ranohira Madagascar's climate. (Temp on top, Precip. on bottom)
Source:weatheronline.co.uk
Source:t2.gstatic.com
And here is what I assume a climograph would look like 100 years ago.
So what is causing this change in climate. As you know Ranohira is affected by a maritime polar air mass currently but during the late early cretaceous period (using the map to track the previous location) it looks like Ranohira would have been affected by a continental antarctic airmass along with the maritime polar. This would cause Ranohira to be much colder as the antarctic wind swept upwards from Antartica.
Source:rst.gsfc.nasa.gov
Another thing that would have effected the climate of Ranohira are the winds. Currently Ranohira is located almost right on the line of the Tropic of Capricorn (as shown in the picture below). This means that Ranohira experiences a high intensity of the suns rays. But back when Ranohira was located in a different position, more south, it would have been effected by the Westerlies. This means that the west side of Ranohira would receive warm winds from the surrounding ocean. Also the westerlies may have driven more tropical cyclones to occur.
Source: nc-climate.ncsu.edu
Source: rst.gsfc.nasa.gov
There have been many changes in the makeup of the land since the late early cretaceous era. Because humans did not live on the land back then there were no anthopogenic changes contributing to climate change.
Source:globalvoicesonline.org
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Even though I said in a previous blog that the people of Madagascar have not disturbed the land as much as American cities, every alteration does effect the climate. Tearing down the forest to make way for roads and shelter has made a change to climate by changing the amount of GHGs in the atmosphere. However I'm sure that if I compared the past and present climate of Chicago (as i did in my previous blog) the man-made contributions would be much less statistically significant in Ranohira.
What does the future hold?
Source:3.bp.blogspot.com
From what I have observed from this graph of global warming predictions in the years 2070-2100 is that Ranohira will experience temperatures reaching to about 4 degrees Celsius than now. That means that the climograph would maybe look like this
I believe that this is mainly due to anthropogenic changes rather than physical ones. However 100 million years from now I am lead to believe that the changes in climate will be due to physical changes.
Source:sg.hu
The photo above shows a prediction of where the continents are projected to be millions of years from now(I think Madagascar is the small country located 15 degrees west? It is also circled). I assume that because this predicts for 250 million (third earth in photo) years from now that in 100 million we will be some in between the present day positions and the predicted 250 million year position. But judging by the diagram Madagascar will be located just above the equator which would definitely cause the temperature to be much warmer than it is today. This also would place Ranohira in the Norther hemisphere (where it has never been located before). This may greatly affect the climate. Ranohira would then be affected by maritime equatorial and maritime tropical airmasses which means that Ranohira would experience warmer and more moist/humid weather.
I would say that in order to avoid climate change in the near future Ranohira should avoid creating anthropogenic damages. But as for the future due to such a dramatic shift in Ranohira's position there is nothing to do to avoid climate change.
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