WILL BRAZIL CHILL KILL COFFEE?

The “Ice Age Now” site has been reporting deep snows, in some cases over ten feet deep,  in the mountains of Chile and Argentina, with the cold pouring east across the pampas and northeast into southern Brazil.
http://iceagenow.info/chile-71-workers-trapped-snow/ http://iceagenow.info/argentina-two-meters-snow-near-chilean-border/ http://iceagenow.info/record-cold-brazil-2/

The coffee crops have been extended to the southern limits of what is possible in Brazil, just as orange trees are grown to the northern limits of what is possible in Florida, and therefore just as arctic outbreaks threaten Florida’s oranges in our winter, antarctic outbreaks threaten Brazil’s coffee.

The interesting thing is that it is still officially autumn in the southern hemisphere. Winter doesn’t begin for a fortnight.

My interest is piqued because I am watching to see if the southern hemisphere gets the same loopy jet stream we got last winter. The current culprit is a low off the east coast of Brazil in the South Atlantic, which is bringing cold south winds north on its west side, (because low pressure spins clockwise in the southern hemisphere,) (which is an excellent mental exercise, if you feel like stretching your ability to visualize maps, first things in the morning,) (which is why coffee is important.)

As this low meanders off the coast the early morning is coldest, with considerable warming during the day, especially up in the pampas of northern Argentina.

What I would assume is that the antarctic blast would be moderated by the day-time warming, and the cold wave would fade. However by glancing ahead through the early morning maps, it looks like a following blast of cold comes roaring north across the pampas to southern Brazil.

This shows a couple things. First it shows how poking through the thousands of maps Ryan Maue makes available at the Weatherbell site can make you late for work. Second it shows why gamblers who like to play with coffee futures study meteorology.  (I may stock up a bit myself.)

And there is a third thing as well. “Global Warming” isn’t effecting Brazil, where temperatures are setting new record lows.

BRIEF UPDATE ON BRAZIL’S FROSTS

I can’t get going on a Monday without coffee, so yesterday I clicked onto Weatherbell Site to look at Dr. Ryan Maue’s  temperature maps from the GFS model, and clicked on South America to see if the forecasts were right, and they had frost on Sunday morning. The pink in the very south of Brazil shows they did.

This is news because it is only the start of Autumn down there. It is more usual to get frost in the middle of their winter, which is July. This is like the orange groves of Florida getting frost in October, rather than January.

I got curious about the GFS forecast, so I clicked ahead through the next few days, and could see the early cold snap faded away. New Antarctic cold threatens at the bottom of the maps, but is curved to the east by the roaring Antarctic westerlies.

MONDAY MORNING  TUESDAY MORNING  WEDNESDAY MORNING

It has been suggested some of the farmers in Brazil have tried to grow coffee too far south. The same thing happened in the USA when some tried to grow oranges too far north in Florida, and even in Georgia. So one needs to check the map to see if this frost actually reached north to where coffee grows. 

It looks to me like the frosts were  just south of where the coffee is grown. But, if Global Warming was real, they should be able to grow coffee further south. Frost on the first of May, when the trees are just blooming, seems a good reason to avoid planting further south.

Something to think about, as I sip my second cup.