World weather experts set ambitious El Nino agenda
Date: 25-Mar-02
Country: AUSTRALIA
Some 3,000 ocean robots will be dispatched to measure sea temperatures and salinity with the aim of improving prediction lead times of when El Nino will strike, meteorologists said at the end of a two-week conference in Tasmania.
"It's the developing nations that stand to lose the most from these climate events, but also stand to benefit the most from successful forecasts and prediction," said Antonio Busalacchi Jr, a meteorology professor at the University of Maryland, who delivered the main paper on the weather effect.
Longer lead times, presently a maximum of around six months, would be of most help to developing tropical countries and regions around the Pacific Ocean such as Indonesia, South America and southern Africa, he said.
El Nino, which means "the child" in Spanish, is a disruption in the ocean and atmosphere system in the Pacific Ocean that causes floods in the southwest United States and western Latin America, and drought in eastern Australia and Southeast Asia and southern Africa.
The ocean robots were the first ingredient in a "quantum step forward" to full-scale monitoring of the interaction between oceans and the atmosphere, Roger Newson, assistant director of Geneva-based World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), said.
Present Pacific Ocean temperatures were about one degree centigrade warmer than normal, a signal that an El Nino was forming. All major scientific models were showing weak warning signals over the next three to six months of the development of an El Nino, Busalacchi said.
The two-week meeting involved representatives from every major country conducting climate research, and of every major international weather institution. Meetings concluded last week after the final session of the WCRP's joint scientific committee, which involved about 75 scientists.
