{"id":16915,"date":"2023-11-11T12:13:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T06:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=16915"},"modified":"2025-04-05T00:54:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:24:34","slug":"lake-titicaca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/lake-titicaca\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Facts about Lake Titicaca"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Lake Titicaca<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is the\u00a0highest navigable body of water in the world.<\/li>\n<li>It is located at\u00a03,810 metres above sea level in the\u00a0Andes Mountains of South America.<\/li>\n<li>It lies on the\u00a0border between Peru to the west\u00a0and Bolivia to the east.<\/li>\n<li>Titicaca is the\u00a0second-largest lake in South America (after Maracaibo).\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It covers some 8,300 square km and extends in a northwest-to-southeast direction for a\u00a0distance of 190 km.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>It is 50 miles (80 km) across at its widest point.<\/li>\n<li>A narrow strait, Tiquina, separates the lake into two bodies of water.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The lake averages between 140 and 180 metres in depth, but the\u00a0bottom tilts sharply toward the Bolivian shore.<\/li>\n<li>The lake is 284 m deep at its deepest point, located in the northeastern section of the lake.<\/li>\n<li>More than 25 rivers empty their waters\u00a0into Titicaca; the\u00a0largest, the Ramis, drains about two-fifths of the entire Titicaca Basin.<\/li>\n<li>Forty-one islands rise from Titicaca\u2019s waters, the largest of which,\u00a0Titicaca Island, can be seen just off the tip of the Copacabana Peninsula in Bolivia.<\/li>\n<li>Lake Titicaca is a\u00a0designated Ramsar Site of International Importance.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What are El Nino and La Nina?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>El Nino and La Nina are\u00a0two opposing climate trends that deviate from normal conditions and\u00a0normally run for nine to twelve months, but can often extend.<\/li>\n<li>These events\u00a0occur every two to seven years on average (El Nino is more frequent than La Nina), but not on a regular basis, and together are\u00a0referred to as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle by scientists.<\/li>\n<li>El Nino is typically known as\u00a0the warm phase (a\u00a0band of warmer water spreading from\u00a0west to east\u00a0in the equatorial\u00a0Pacific Ocean), and\u00a0La Nina is identified as the cold phase\u00a0(a\u00a0band of cooler water spreading east to west) of ENSO.<\/li>\n<li>Both El Nino and La Nina can\u00a0have global effects on weather, wildfires, ecosystems, and economics.<\/li>\n<li>What happens during El Nino?\n<ul>\n<li>During El Ni\u00f1o,\u00a0trade winds weaken.<\/li>\n<li>Warm water\u00a0is pushed back east,\u00a0toward the\u00a0west\u00a0coast of the Americas.<\/li>\n<li>Rainfall increases drastically\u00a0in Ecuador and northern Peru, contributing to coastal\u00a0flooding and erosion.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>As El Ni\u00f1o brings rain to South America, it\u00a0brings droughts to Indonesia and Australia.<\/li>\n<li>Stronger El Ni\u00f1o events also\u00a0disrupt global atmospheric circulation.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The\u00a0eastward movement of oceanic\u00a0and atmospheric heat sources\u00a0causes\u00a0unusually severe winter weather\u00a0at the higher latitudes\u00a0of North\u00a0and South America.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q1) What is a Strait?<\/h3>\n<p>A strait can be defined as a naturally formed narrow strip of water between two continents, islands or two larger bodies of water. It is usually used for navigational purposes and is sometimes referred to as a channel when it is found between two land masses.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/theprint.in\/environment\/in-south-americas-andes-a-shrinking-lake-titicaca-rings-climate-alarm-bell\/1840969\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>In South America\u2019s Andes, a shrinking Lake Titicaca rings climate alarm bell<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable body of water in the world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":16916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}