Peru: "The Sun Used To Warm Us, Now It Burns Us" - UV Danger High Along Andes

The brisk March morning air is a shock after the tourists have recently, regretfully unpacked themselves from their cozy alpaca wool blankets and climate-controlled buses. Watching them is Natividad Sonjo, who has been selling blankets, painted stones and carved bamboo instruments for 15 years on the eastern edge of Sacsayhuamán, an archaeological complex of enormous stone walls and wide lawns just north of Cusco, Peru, the seat of the great Inca empire. The diffuse sunlight of a cloudy morning high in the Andes softly illuminates the city. And then, all at once, the sun breaks through, bringing with it a wallop of heat. Soon, any memory of the cool air has evaporated along with the clouds, but Sonjo doesn't remove the elaborately embroidered wool jacket she put on first thing that morning. "The sun used to warm us," she says, repeating a common refrain among inhabitants of the Peruvian altiplano. "Now it burns us."

The sun has always been strong in Cusco. The city's proximity to the equator and its altitude—some 11,150 feet above sea level—mean that come summer in the Southern Hemisphere, sunlight doesn’t have to travel far to reach Cusco. It also doesn’t encounter much interference along the way—not a good state of affairs for those who live here. The amount of ultraviolet radiation that makes it to Earth is limited by atmospheric ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms bound together. At higher altitudes, there are fewer ozone molecules between the Earth and the sun, making UV readings normally elevated in mountainous regions near the equator. In 2006, climate researchers found Cusco and the surrounding area to have the highest UV readings in the world. But now, as climate scientists say the planet is reaching critical temperatures worldwide, Peruvian meteorologists are recording record levels of UV radiation throughout the country, while meteorologists in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia are recording similarly increased levels in regions close to Peru.

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As the Peruvian meteorological agency's chief UV researcher, Orlando Ccora is responsible for collecting the data from a network of nine spectrophotometers dotted throughout the country's varied landscape. The data show that cities up and down Peru's Pacific coast, including Lima, the capital, have regularly recorded daily UV index readings of over 14 during the past two months, while in the southern Andes region, one in every four days has had a reading of 16. For comparison, the highest UV index reading in Miami last year was roughly 12.5, and the World Health Organization regards any reading over 11 as "extreme." In January, Ccora's team recorded an average UV index reading of 13.6 for Cusco—the highest average monthly reading since they began collecting data in 2009. Scientists have been concerned about serious reductions in ozone since at least the 1970s, says Paul Newman, chief scientist for atmospheric sciences at NASA. He explains that man-made chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons—which were used in refrigerants, propellants and aerosols from the 1970s into the early 2000s—collect over Antarctica during the Northern Hemisphere's summer months. Then, when the Southern Hemisphere begins to warm in August, the CFCs get activated by sunlight and start to destroy the ozone molecules that trap and deflect enough UV radiation to allow life to grow on Earth. By November, that depleted-ozone air spreads out through the Southern Hemisphere.

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Back at the Sacsayhuamán ruins, Sonjo's friend and fellow vendor Lucinda Fuentes was worried about the drought—among the worst she'd seen. "It's terrible, because in May and June there won't even be any clouds in the morning," she says. "Year by year, the drought and the sun are getting worse." Fuentes, Sonjo and the 12 other vendors at the archaeological site complained of a long list of ailments brought on by the sun. Freckles that got bigger until they had to be removed, rashes that burned and itched at night, conjunctivitis and even cataracts. Jessica Almanza, a tour guide with the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, says she burns even when it does rain. Thick stone walls, tile roofs and narrow streets make dodging the sun within Cusco's city limits quite a bit easier, but as so much of the local economy relies on agriculture, mining and tourism, an overwhelming proportion of the population will spend, by necessity, a potentially harmful amount of time in direct sunlight.

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http://www.newsweek.com/peru-climate-change-ultraviolet-radiation-ozone-436746