Scientists predicting El Nino in 2020
▶ Next year’s forecast is in as the Pacific Ocean begins to warm
The complex El Nino weather pattern that can bring disastrous heavy rainfall and long droughts to countries around the Pacific – from Peru to Indonesia to Australia – will probably emerge again in 2020, researchers have predicted.
An international team of scientists forecast an 80 percent chance next year of an El Nino, which occurs when seasurface temperatures rise substantially above normal in the east-central Equatorial Pacific.
This week they said their model – which uses an algorithm that draws on analysis of links between changing air temperatures at a network of grid points across the Pacific region – could predict an El Nino at least a year ahead.
“Conventional methods are unable to make a reliable ‘El Nino’ forecast more than six months in advance. With our method, we have roughly doubled the previous warning time,” said co-developer Armin Bunde, a physicist at Germany’s Justus Liebig University Giessen.
The term El Nino, meaning “boy child” in Spanish, was first used in the 19th century by fishermen in Peru and Ecuador to refer to the unusually warm waters that reduced their catch just before Christmas, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The phenomenon occurs every two to seven years and typically lasts for 9 to 12 months, often beginning mid-year and peaking between November and January.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director emeritus of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said insights from the new method would be made available to people affected by it.
PIK researcher Josef Ludescher said he would soon discuss the findings with the weather service in Peru.
El Nino often brings torrential rains in the north of the mountainous Latin American nation, with a high risk of mudslides, he said.
El Nino also can cause extended droughts in other parts of South America, Indonesia, Australia and Africa, PIK said.
In the Indian subcontinent, it may change monsoon patterns, while California can experience more precipitation.
The new prediction method could give more time for authorities to prepare for such impacts, Ludescher added.
The team is now adapting the algorithm to be able to predict the timing and strength of El Nino. In the future, a similar method could be used to improve forecasts of Asia’s monsoon, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
The discovery of the new method was first published in 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal – and the scientists have since been checking its accuracy.