Ms Noordam Cruise Ship Cancels Stops At Jakarta

Jakarta - January 29th : The magnificent Dutch-flagged cruise ship owned by the Holland America Line company, MS Noordam, had to canceled its visit to Jakarta on Wednesday (29/1/2025) due to bad weather. This was conveyed through a short email sent by the ship manager at around 09.30 AM, with the ship's position in the waters of Jakarta Bay.

The cruise ship was scheduled to dock at Pelabuhan Tanjung Priok (Port at North Jakarta) on the same day before continuing its route to Singapore. This is the first time the ship has canceled a destination visit in early 2025, after the '28 Days, round-trip Coral Triangle, Volcanoes Great Barrier Reef'; an early year's cruise route.

Based on the data from CruiseMapper, the cruise ship MS Noordam has stopped at Bitung, North Sulawesi on January 9th, 2025; continued to Jayapura City, Papua on January 12th, 2025 and three consecutive days to Komodo Island, Lombok, and Bali on January 25th-27th, 2025.

Quoted from the site of Indonesian's Official for Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency/Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika (BMKG), issued an early warning related to extreme weather in anticipation of the Chinese New Year holiday 2025; especially in the Jakarta area, namely related to rain with moderate to heavy intensity accompanied by strong winds.

As a result of this cancellation, MS Noordam, the cruise ship with 750 crew and 2,900 foreign passengers was sailed away to leave the northern Java Sea and expected to land in Singapore on February 1st 2025.

The Reason Why, Explained by BMKG

Indonesian's Official of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi, dan Geofisika/BMKG) had an explanation for a ship, as huge as a cruise, can't process to sail and stops at Jakarta on that time.

Java sea, especially the north side where Jakarta's bay located on, almost always had inclement weathers during January to February. It was primarily caused by the effect of monsoon season, leads to the higher humidity from the average, resulting into heavy rainfall and frequent thunderstorms due to the natural atmospheric phenomena of Asian monsoon (brings moist air masses from the northern hemisphere), Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), and equatorial waves. The high-intensity rain also occured due to the activity of Equatorial Rossby waves, forming the convective clouds in Indonesia.

These are the factors that often resulting in significant rainfall along the Java coast, including Jakarta's coastal areas; making the sea conditions rough and potentially dangerous. Also, the BMKGs predicted this extreme weather would still occur in Jakarta and its area, in the afternoon to evening, and gradually decrease after February 2025.

The values from Negative Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) indicate the presence of areas with strong convection activity, where the cold surge from Siberia strengthens the Monsoon and increases air humidity. The report of Significance of the Cross-Equatorial Northerly Surge (CENS) on January 27th, 2025, clearly states the movement of water vapors from the western Pacific Ocean to the region of Indonesian waters.

Meanwhile, local factors also consist the high percentage of air humidity (around 80-90%) in the 925-500 mb atmospheric layer that supporting rain cloud growth. High atmospheric liability index indicating atmospheric conditions that support intensive convective cloud formation, and the impact of wind's convergence around Jakarta increases the potential for the growth of rain clouds.

With all these factors combined, it was not surprisingly how a calm weather could turns into a chaotic ones in the short period of time. The extreme weather conditions in Jakarta mainland and the waters, one of the real impacts of global warming.

Global warming was not a simple thing. This is a warning from nature to humans; the environmental issues that should received serious attentions and agile acts for the Earth's future. The impact of global warming is increasingly felt, especially from the maritime's part; not only in Jakarta and Indonesia, but also over the world.