Awareness of ENSO Events in Japan
Mikiyasu NakayamaUtsunomiya University
Tochigi, Japan
nakayama@utsunomiya-u.ac.jp
A number of articles about the possible adverse effects of El Niño, cold summer in particular, were featured by Japanese newspapers in June and July 1997. The sale of beer and soft drinks during summer was also assumed to be in low profile. Reduction in tourism for the summer vacation period was also a matter of concern for the travel industry. The mass media also hinted that the decrease by 1°C of average temperatures in July and August should lead to a decrease of consumption in general by 0.3%. Moreover, agricultural production was expected to decrease by 7.3%, if the summer in 1997 would be as cold as it had been in 1993, which was known to be the worst cold summer in the past decade or two. A famous Japanese think-tank went so far as to predict that the GDP of Japan in 1997 would shrink by 0.2% because of El Niño.
However, views about the extent of El Niño's effect on temperature in summer, as cited in newspapers, varied. An article mentioned that a cold summer was recorded in 7 summer seasons out of the 9 El Niño events that had occurred since 1972, while another article mentioned that the possibility of having a cold summer during an El Niño event was estimated at no more than 40%. It was apparent that there was no solid consensus, as yet, among researchers about the effects of El Niño on Japanese weather in summer.
The summer of 1997 was, in reality, a warm summer rather than a cold one. Agricultural production of that year, in particular paddy rice, was above nominal. Most of the "predictions" that appeared in newspapers, namely the emergence of a cold summer and its related impacts, proved wrong. An exception was the number of typhoons that emerged in 1997, in that many more typhoons were observed than nominal years in the Pacific, as predicted by many meteorologists.
Awareness about El Niño skyrocketed during the onset of the 1997-98 El Niño event, while awareness about La Niña was still quite low, at least as late as early July 1998. The attached table shows the number of articles on ENSO events that appeared in Saga Shimbun, a local newspaper published in southern Japan. Most of the ENSO related articles that appeared were actually developed by a news agent and delivered to local newspapers. It is, thus, safe to assume that the tendency for reporting about ENSO events should be the same for other newspapers, both local and national.
A national newspaper featured an article about the emergence of La Niña on its front page in early July with an imagery of sea surface temperature of the Pacific taken by the Japanese TRMM satellite. A few articles on La Niña appeared, thereafter, in other newspapers as well, although the number of such articles was still not comparable to those that appeared during the 1997-1998 El Niño event.
The following possible impacts of La Niña were mentioned in newspaper articles: (1)a cold winter and a subsequent increasing fuel consumption, (2) fewer typhoons which may lead to less damage to houses, roads, railways, etc., (3) a hot summer, which may induce more electricity consumption for air conditioning, and (4) a shorter rainy season, which leads to shortages of water for paddy fields in the summer. These effects are clearly based on the concept that La Niña is the opposite of El Niño, and few articles accompanied statistical figures.
In conclusion, the awareness of La Niña in Japan is still low, especially in comparison to El Niño after mid-1997. The "possible effects" of La Niña mentioned in the mass media were mostly based on an assumption that El Niño and La Niña are exactly the opposite phenomenon, and may not be based on the solid outcome of scientific research on the La Niña phenomenon.
| Year | On El Niño | On La Niña |
| 1994 | 9 | 1 |
| 1995 | 5 | 0 |
| 1996 | 2 | 1 |
| 1997 | 46 | 2 |
| 1998* | 32 | 3 |
| *as of 12 July 1998 | ||