Workshop
15-17 July 1998
Boulder, Colorado, USA

NEW since 2002:
La Niña and Its Impacts: Facts and Speculation. This book is based on the findings of the meeting.

Update of current La Niña Event
(NOAA/CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center)

Workshop Convenor : Michael Glantz, Senior Scientist
Workshop Coordinator : D. Jan Stewart

Considerable attention has been focused on the El Niño event of 1997-98. Physical and social scientists have had an opportunity to monitor the physical processes associated with this event as well as to observe the worldwide societal impacts associated with El Niño. During this summer, several organizations will be scrutinizing this El Niño in the hope of generating improved understanding and new ideas about the phenomenon and its impacts.

It was the objective of the La Niña Summit to identify what is known with some degree of reliability about the cold event (La Niña) and about its societal and environmental impacts. La Niña has been less well studied than the warm event (El Niño), yet it too is associated with climate anomalies around the globe. Identification of the current state of understanding of La Niña and its societal and environmental impacts, as well as giving more attention to this aspect of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle, was the focus of this workshop. Fifteen countries were represented.

A workshop report has been prepared for distribution. For more information about the workshop or the report, please contact D. Jan Stewart or Michael Glantz.

This "Usable Science" activity was the first of several activities currently being developed for the new UNU Program "El Niño Impacts and Response Strategies for Pacific Rim Countries." Dr. Michael Glantz, Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), is the UNU Project Coordinator, and Dr. Mikiyasu Nakayama, Professor at Utsunomiya University (Japan) is the Deputy Coordinator for this emerging activity. This project enables UNU's environmental program to become an important contributor to an improved understanding of a natural hazard that has spawned floods, frosts, fires, and changes in typhoon tracks.

For more information about the emerging UNU program on El Niño, please contact either Michael Glantz at NCAR or Juha Uitto, UNU officer in charge of the project, at the UNU Headquarters in Tokyo.