Hector Hernandez

ATMO 1020 Climate Change

Andrew Lesage
October 27, 2017

Project 1: Climate Perspective

My name is Romualdo Lara, I am a farmer in the middle of the Sierra Madre Occidental

which is the major mountain range system of the North American Cordillera that runs throughout

the Northwestern and Western of Mexico, I am 60 years old and I only live with my wife in our

very small and humble house made of mud and bricks which are not that strong. I live out of my

crops, I crop mostly all of the fundamental things such as peppers, beans, tomatoes, potatoes,

onions, etc. But the main one which I crop is corn because we get most of our alimentation out of

it such as tortillas and the corn itself and the plant for my horse and my cows, since they need it to

sustain and, so I can milk them and therefore get cheese and many other great aliments that can be

made of milk. Life in here is somehow complicated because you have to work and earn everything,

you have to get your own meat, by killing an animal, growing up your own food and the most

important thing, I live based on water as most people do, but my life always depends on it, since

is the vital need for my crops to grow, for the grass so my animals can also be feed by it and for

my body, I need water for everything, even to wash my clothes in the river and many other reasons.

But there is a small problem and I have always been concerned about the climate and the behavior

of the seasons each year and I am saying it because Ive had really bad experiences with past years

where precipitation was almost absent and the land was just dry, there was very little water on the

rivers, (almost no current), it was more like small amount of water in specific parts of the river and

these are the years where Ive heard a strange change on the worlds temperature occurs which
people call it El Nino, and I can only say that it is certainly a killer for my animals and for my

crops as well.

The weather in here is usually mild, mostly warm, where the annual temperature is 21.0 C.

and where the average rainfall is 998 mm. The closest town nearby my little farm is called Santa

Maria del Oro and these are some graphs and tables corresponding to the climate and how it has

differed over the months and years as well due to climate change. This first graph shows

precipitation over the months:

 This next graph shows the temperature of this town with an average of 23.9 C, where June

is the hottest month of the year and January the coldest with temperatures around 17.3 C.

It is in fact estimated that the climate is going to change significantly within the next few

decades and I would notice these changes in my environment, if either precipitation increases or

decreases, and whether I would end up being affected in such a way that I would have to migrate

to another area or even a city to get a living out of it.

References:

Climate-Data.org. Climate Santa Mara del Oro: Temperature, Climograph, Climate

table for Santa Mara del Oro - Climate-Data.org, 9 Aug. 2015, en.climate-

data.org/location/871848/.

Climate Wizard. Climate Wizard, www.climatewizard.org/.

How do El Nio events affect Mexico? GeoMexico the geography of Mexico, geo-

mexico.com/?p=3852.
 Sierra Madre Occidental. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Oct. 2017,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Madre_Occidental.