El Nino Established In Pacific
Pastor Dale Morgan
El Nino Established In Pacific*
Geneva (AFP) Dec 03, 2006
A "moderate" El Nino current is now established in the Pacific basin,
triggering a serious drought in Australia, heavy rain in East Africa and
heralding other severe weather conditions over coming months, the UN's
weather agency said Friday. "A moderate El Nino doesn't mean the impact
will be moderate," said Rupa Kumarkolli, a scientist at the World
Meteorological Organisation.
The WMO warned in its update bulletin that the "moderate" rating did not
give "cause for complacency".
El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern
Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western
seaboard of Latin America to East Africa, and potentially has a global
impact on climate.
The WMO said that the climatic phenomenon "is now established across the
tropical Pacific Basin and is expected to continue until at least the
first quarter of 2007", although it may persist for even longer.
Sea surface temperatures in the region were one to 1.5 degrees celsius
warmer than usual in October and were expected to rise, it added. The
WMO said a "particularly strong pattern of unusually cool temperatures"
had also taken hold in equatorial areas of the western Pacific and
eastern Indian Ocean.
The combined effects since the climatic conditions started to appear in
August have included drought in Australia and Indonesia, storms in the
western Pacific islands, and extremely heavy rainfall in East Africa,
the agency said.
That pattern is expected to be reinforced over the next few months,
according to the update.
Australians have been hit by a combination of dry but unsually cold
conditions and strong winds this month.
Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are struggling with heavy rain and flooding
that has swept farmlands, disrupted food supplies and cut off villages,
affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
El Nino is associated with more severe winter monsoons in South Asia.
Parts of Asia have been battered by violent storms in a strong cyclone
season recently.
By contrast, the El Nino effect may have had a beneficial impact on the
Caribbean basin, following destructive record-strength hurricanes there
in 2005 that notably saw the US Gulf Coast ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
"Usually El Nino is associated with a weak hurricane season,"
Kumarkolli, the WMO's El Nino expert, explained.
Developments in the equatorial Pacific region between March and May 2007
"will be criticial to determining whether El Nino persists for the rest
of next year," the WMO said.
Spanish for "the boy", El Nino's "strong" appearance in 1997-1998 helped
trigger severe rainfall, cyclones and bushfires across America, Africa,
Asia and Australia that led to an estimated 22,000 deaths.
The damage caused by those catastrophes was put at 34 billion dollars
(26.8 billion euros).
Scientists are still trying to fully understand El Nino's effects and
action in combination with other weather patterns.
Source: Agence France-Presse