Project Information
Team leaders, Core Advisors, and Secretariat, July 1999, Geneva, Switzerland
Prepared by Principal Investigator, Michael H. Glantz
Introduction
In each country every year there are likely to be climate variations that are considered to be anomalies. Such anomalies frequently go beyond the range of what is considered to be normal. It is the climate anomaly that most concerns societies, because human activities are geared toward what individuals perceive to be their region's normal climate. When what is considered to be normal does not occur, individuals, corporations, and governments are put in the position of having to decide how best to respond. The truth of the matter is that farmers do not want climate conditions to be either too favorable for agricultural production (leading to over-production and low prices for their products) or too unfavorable (leading to crop failure or bankruptcy for some farmers). El Niño events are major disrupters of what most people view as their normal climates. In those locations where an El Niño's appearance can reliably be associated with regional or local climate variations such as droughts and floods, El Niño forecasts can provide decision makers not just with an early warning, but with the earliest possible warning of an increased risk to such adverse climate conditions.
The 1997-98 El Niño
During mid-1997, sea surface temperatures across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean became much warmer than normal, as a major El Niño event developed. In fact it was so intense that scientists have since labeled it "The El Niño of the 20th Century." Rain-producing cloud systems, i.e., deep tropical atmospheric convection, in the region of the western Pacific Ocean shifted eastward. As a consequence, flood-producing heavy rainfall occurred in many parts of the usually dry western coastal regions of South America. Also, as the rain-producing cloud mechanisms shifted eastward, drought conditions prevailed over the western Pacific and Southeast Asian regions. This El Niño event dissipated in May and ended in June 1998, as unexpectedly and as rapidly as it had developed more than a year earlier. Sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific rapidly returned to normal and then, a few months later, to cooler-than-normal conditions referred to as a La Niña event.
The adverse societal impacts of the intense 1997-98 event made El Niño a household word just about everywhere on the globe, even in remote rural areas. The event also brought international attention to the risks posed to society and the environment by the climate-related extremes that it can spawn, particularly in the developing world. Loss of life, destruction of infrastructure, depletion of food and water reserves, displacement of communities and outbreaks of infectious disease all occurred as manifestations of climate-related natural disasters that occurred concurrently with the 1997-98 El Niño event.
The United Nations (UN) General Assembly took notice of the intensity and worldwide extent of natural disasters associated (rightly or wrongly) with the 1997-98 El Niño and requested that the Secretary-General, as reflected in Resolutions 52/200 and 53/185, develop a strategy within the framework of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) to prevent, mitigate, and rehabilitate the damage caused by the El Niño phenomenon. In December 1997, the Inter Agency Task Force on El Niño was created within the framework of the International Decade for IDNDR. The Task Force was established for cooperative work between UN member agencies and their partner agencies outside the United Nations system. It provided a platform for combining efforts to improve the general understanding of the El Niño phenomenon, for disseminating early warnings prior to the events, and for channeling technical assistance and capacity-building resources to Member States threatened or affected by El Niño- and La Niña-related disaster impacts. The UN Task Force on El Niño demonstrated the immense value of multidisciplinary approaches in the efforts to reduce global disasters. The members of the Task Force recognized the need for long-term risk reduction to avoid the repetition of the disastrous social, economic, and environmental impacts of the final El Niño of the twentieth century. The International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (ISDR), as the successor agency to the IDNDR, has been designated to maintain this interagency mechanism for concerted action on El Niño.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the International Council for Science (ICSU), working with the IDNDR Secretariat within the framework of the UN Task Force on El Niño, organized the scientific program for the First Global Assessment of the 1997-98 El Niño Event. This international seminar on the 1997-98 El Niño event took place in Guayaquil, Ecuador in November 1998, and was sponsored by the Government of Ecuador, the UN Task Force on El Niño, and the Permanent Commission for the South Pacific (CPPS).
Interestingly, this global seminar took place in the same city – Guayaquil – where, twenty-four years earlier in 1974, the first international workshop on "The Phenomenon Known as El Niño" had been convened in response to the devastating regional impacts (in western South America) of the 1972-73 El Niño event.
El Niño's Teleconnections
Scientists refer to the process of associating a specific societal impact thousands of miles away from the Pacific Ocean with the ENSO cycle's warm or cold extreme as one of "attribution." They refer to the relationship itself as a "teleconnection." For some countries or regions within them, the association of climate-related anomalies with El Niño or La Niña events is very strong and the attribution is, therefore, considered reliable enough for use in decision making. However, for other countries such associations are likely to exist but of varying degrees of reliability and, therefore, may be less clear. Teleconnections can be further categorized by their timing with respect to the onset of the various phases that an El Niño goes through during its life cycle (onset, growth, peak, decay). Armed with such details, individuals as well as governments can develop appropriate seasonal responses to El Niño's possible impacts. The fact is that any advanced warning of the onset of either of ENSO's extremes (warm or cold) can provide usable and useful information to those prepared to use it. ENSO's extreme warm (El Niño) and extreme cold (La Niña) events can disrupt various regional and local climates around the globe to varying degrees and in a variety of ways, but especially in the tropics and, most directly, in countries that border the Pacific Ocean (e.g., Pacific Rim countries). While the ENSO phenomenon and its extremes are not yet considered to be natural hazards by the hazards research community, they clearly spawn hazards to society such as droughts, floods, fires, frosts, cyclones, and infectious disease outbreaks around the world. This means that ENSO-related forecasts can provide a society (an individual, government agency, or a corporation) with the earliest warning of potentially disruptive climate anomalies, even in locations where the teleconnections are not considered to be very robust.
Many government officials are beginning to believe that the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters are increasing, because of the numerous "blockbuster" climate-related extreme events and disasters that occurred in the late 1980s and in the 1990s (e.g., Hurricane Hugo, the North American drought, Hurricanes Andrew and Georges, El Niño 1997-98, floods in Mozambique, torrential rains and mudslides in Venezuela, severe wind storms in France, record-setting cyclone winds, a succession of record-setting annual global temperatures). That twelve-year period was one during which political interest in the global warming issue increased sharply. Some researchers have linked these two factors (i.e., a warmer atmosphere and an increase in the frequency of extreme events) and have suggested that climate change will increase the probability of more extreme events in the future. Researchers are also seeking to identify the likely impacts of global warming on the frequency and intensity of El Niño and La Niña episodes. They are now focusing their attention on evaluating these beliefs and suggestions. In any event, because El Niño (and La Niña) events have been linked to many natural disasters, it is important that policy makers increase their awareness and use of El Niño-related information in decision making.
Because several different kinds of hazards can occur in a country simultaneously, it can be difficult, but not impossible, to attribute with a high level of certainty a particular adverse societal impact as having been cause by a specific hazard. For example, the 1991-92 El Niño occurred at the same time as a major drought and the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines. To what extent did El Niño, the eruption, or some combination of the two influence that drought? Likewise, the 1982-83 El Niño and the eruption of El Chichón in Mexico occurred at the same time, making it difficult to distinguish El Niño's impacts worldwide from those of the volcano's emissions into the stratosphere. These volcanic eruptions may have modified the effects of the El Niño events, but it is more likely, for example, that they simply masked our ability to observe from satellites the effect on such environmental conditions as sea surface temperatures. The January 1998 ice storm in northeast Canada exposed another example of the problem of attribution. It appears (from research) that the El Niño may have been a contributing factor to this damaging ice storm. However, it is not possible to draw a general conclusion with confidence about the influence of El Niño events on the formation of major ice storms over eastern Canada.
Another often-overlooked reason that governments should pay close attention to El Niño is the subtle long-term influence it has on sustainable development. For example, the devastation caused by a drought lasting but one growing season can set in motion adverse ripples in the socio-economic system that can continue for several years. For example, agricultural losses during a drought can reduce export earnings for a developing country that needs to meet its budgetary goals. Thus, a single El Niño-related drought (or any drought for that matter) could reduce a region's, if not a country's, standard of living for some extended period of time. An appropriate analogy to a developing country's attempts at development that are periodically disrupted by El Niño (or La Niña) would be that of the mythical Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill only to have it fall back down before reaching the summit. He must begin the process again and again never to reach the top. Therefore, not only the contemporary geographic impacts of El Niño need to be understood, but also their delayed impacts over time.
Forecast impacts
A reliable El Niño forecast, however, is not enough to protect society from harm, because existing socio-economic and environmental conditions in a country ultimately determine the severity of the impacts of El Niño's teleconnected climate anomalies. Thus a country with properly located or properly constructed buildings and a well-maintained transportation or communication infrastructure is less likely to suffer damage to its built environment than one with improper construction and a poorly maintained infrastructure, when each has been affected by a climate anomaly of similar magnitude. For example, the severity of Hurricane Andrew's impacts in Florida had as much (if not more) to do with poor housing construction in southern Florida as it had to do with the hurricane's intensity (Pielke and Pielke, 1997).
Whether or not a forecast proves to have been correct, people will have reacted to it, and their reactions will have real consequences. Therefore, it is very important to assess the societal responses to the forecast of an El Niño (as well as responses to the impacts of an El Niño event itself). In areas where teleconnections are strong, El Niño is expected to generate natural hazards (droughts, floods, frosts, fires) that most likely are already familiar to the governments because they have had to deal with them even before they learned of their association with El Niño. By knowing about the possibility of an El Niño episode some time in advance of its onset, the value added of such knowledge is that such a forecast can provide an early warning that provides enough lead time for governments and individuals to develop strategic responses.
Need for attribution
Scientists and the media tend to refer to El Niño's environmental and social impacts as if they affect an entire country. Yet, seldom is a whole country affected in the same way by the same type of El Niño-related anomaly (e.g., drought or flood) because of its diverse topographical features. For example, during an El Niño, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica tends to suffer from drought. However, its Atlantic coastal areas usually (but not always) remain wet. As another example, northern Peru during El Niño suffers from floods, while the southern part usually suffers from El Niño-related drought. Northeast Brazil suffers from severe drought during El Niño, while southeastern Brazil tends to be plagued by heavy rains and flooding.
Users of El Niño information need to know the degree of reliability of the teleconnections that scientists attribute to ENSO's extremes as well as the location and type of their possible sub-national impacts. In this regard, forecasters should include "error bars" with their forecasts- that is, what they personally consider to be the degree of reliability of their forecast. Armed with such information, governments as well as individuals can plan to mitigate expected impacts in areas that had previously been identified as at risk to El Niño's adverse influences. Under conditions of reliable attributions, governments can establish El Niño-specific forecast and disaster-response institutions.
Although many governments, corporations, and individuals become alerted to an El Niño once it has been forecast, their responses to the forecast will depend on the level of confidence that they have in the proposed linkages between El Niño's teleconnections and human activities. While the climates of some countries have reliable teleconnections to El Niño, others do not. The same applies to El Niño's impacts on different economic sectors. For example, whereas EL Niño's teleconnections to China from the perspective of Chinese authorities may be perceived as weak and, therefore, unreliable, the authorities in Brazil or the Philippines consider the teleconnections to their countries to be strong. So, responses by different governments or different sectors within a country to the same forecast can vary by a wide margin.
Information (Who Knows What, When)
An old political adage suggests that "information is power." This adage is as relevant to El Niño forecasting as it is to politics. Whoever has a reliable El Niño forecast first is in a position to use it to his or her advantage, and sometimes to the detriment of others (Pfaff et al., 1999). Depending on how far in advance of an El Niño that a forecast is received, that forecast can be used either for short lead-time (i.e., tactical) responses to climate anomalies or for responses that require longer (i.e., strategic) lead times. Furthermore, El Niño information in general (not just a forecast) can be valuable for long-range development planning in such sectors as agriculture, water, energy, manufacturing, and public health.
Transparency
Transparency refers to the openness of information and of the processes by which that information is gathered, analyzed, and disseminated. Transparency, as it relates to El Niño forecasts, can increase trust among government agencies, scientists, forecasters, the media, and the public. At the very least, it can create awareness as well as educate, alert, and prepare people for the risks they may (not necessarily will) face from El Niño-related climate anomalies.
Within many governments there are inter-ministerial rivalries and jurisdictional disputes. However, for the public good, such jurisdictional rivalries must be set aside when it comes to dealing with El Niño-related hazards. Ministries must willingly share their hazard-related information with other agencies in a timely way about potential impacts and about the mitigative strategies and tactics that their particular agency might be considering to pursue.
Transparency considerations also apply to forecasters and researchers. They must present an honest appraisal to governments and the media about the state of the art and of the science of El Niño forecasting and an honest picture of their knowledge of the ENSO phenomenon. Transparency between governments and donors is also necessary, so that the needs and expectations about disaster assistance of both are well understood and more accurately assessed.
Economic development and impact studies
There is a need to develop a "culture of climate" in various El Niño-affected countries, if not everywhere. A "culture of climate" requires that the public as well as government authorities learn of the various ways that climate (i.e., variability, fluctuations, change, and extremes) affects human activities and the ecosystems on which societies depend. The more they and their citizens know about how climate, environment, and human activities interact, the better they will be able to take steps to minimize the adverse aspects of climate anomalies and to take advantage of climate-related opportunities. Government policy makers must realize that climate variability and extremes affect their policies in both good and bad ways. Policy makers must also realize that El Niño information (including forecasts) can be used not only for disaster early warning but can also be used to enhance the prospects for sustainable development over the long-term. Hence, government authorities need to be encouraged to support the study of climate-society-environment interactions.
Researchers need to undertake an inventory of climate resources in their countries. Broadly defined, such an inventory includes more than just meteorological data. It includes an identification of climate-related costs as well as benefits to society. It must also include domestic and foreign sources of climate information and climate-related development assistance. Doing so would require a focus on climate impacts on regions, institutions, hazard management, and economic sectors. Impact studies encompass climate's impacts on both managed and unmanaged ecosystems and on society.
Positive impacts
It is important for government agencies and researchers to identify the positive aspects of El Niño, instead of focusing only on the negative. While some parts of their country or sectors of their economy are negatively affected by an event, other parts might actually benefit. This does not mean that one balances out the other from the perspective of those directly affected – those who lose, lose; those who win, win. However, a system could be devised before an El Niño event occurs in which there is a sharing of potential gains in one part of the country with those who are adversely affected in another part. Some efforts have already been undertaken to identify climate- and El Niño-related winners and losers (Glantz, 1990). This topic deserves the attention of government leaders who want to identify the true costs or benefits to the nation of El Niño-related climate anomalies.
Public forecasts
It is important to provide people in all parts of a country (rural as well as urban) with El Niño information, including information on the forecasts and impacts. Those in major urban centers are most frequently made aware of potential anomalies and impacts, and earlier, than those living in the rural areas. This can be remedied by using the radio (as opposed to a major reliance on TV or the Internet), which people in rural and poor areas are more likely to have available. In this age of high tech and the globalization of communications, it is still very important to make full use of the radio as an important primary as well as "backup" channel of communication.
Often climate experts provide their forecasts in terms of probabilities, which many individuals do not readily understand. The information provided to the public should be presented in plain language. Different methods must be developed to convey timely climate information to the public (including its policy makers) in a way that helps it to receive the intended climate message and warning.
El Niño-related teleconnection information can be used to create maps of "at risk" populations, regions, and sectors of society. Such baseline information is useful for the development of El Niño-related responses by individuals, groups, and governments. The preparation of at-risk maps requires national as well as international financial and moral support for national studies related to El Niño (and La Niña).
Forecast surprises
Each El Niño has some unique features that are not captured by the description of an average event. As a result, there are likely to be surprises when a new El Niño event appears. For example, in response to the forecast in Costa Rica of the onset of the 1997-98 event, cattle were moved from the drought-prone northwestern part of the country along the Pacific coast to the country's wetter north central region. However, an unexpected drought occurred there as well, resulting in the death of thousands of the cattle that had been relocated to that area perceived to have provided a "safe haven." El Niño-related surprises are likely to occur and should be expected because scientists do not yet know all the various combinations of ways that El Niño events can develop or influence regional climate in distant locations.
Public education
A government should support the educational needs of its public about El Niño specifically, and more generally about climate-society-environment interactions. It is, therefore, important to organize multidisciplinary climate-related educational efforts that enable government personnel, educators, the public, and representatives of various economic sectors to become more aware of these issues. For their part, governments at all levels and corporations should undertake post-disaster reviews following each major climate-related hazard and disaster, El Niño-related or not. This will improve the likelihood that the impacts of subsequent hazardous events will be mitigated, as a result of lessons learned.
Technology
Many governments do not have the human and financial resources to carry out national high-tech monitoring and forecasting activities focused on ENSO's extreme events. As a result, their meteorological services depend on the research outputs and forecasts from other countries. While the technology and expertise needed to make El Niño forecasts may be lacking in many countries, it is important for each country and the sub-regions within it to develop the expertise needed to assess the forecasts that have been produced by experts in other countries.
In addition, some countries do not have access to the latest research information related to climate's influence on society. As a result, trust must be developed between them and those who are climate-related "information donors." Information donors should assist the recipients of their climate-related information to undertake capacity building in areas related to El Niño. As part of the capacity-building process, local officials should be encouraged to understand and monitor as best they can El Niño and La Niña impacts.
Each of the sixteen country-study team reports called for improving the monitoring of weather and climate in their regions. Each of them also recognized the value of a well-designed network of recording stations to collect meteorological information. Study teams from sub-Saharan Africa saw great value in establishing a TOGA TAO Array-like monitoring network in the Indian Ocean similar to the one developed in the Pacific in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As demonstrated during the 1997-98 El Niño event, changes in sea surface temperatures in various parts of the Indian Ocean can influence and overshadow the expected impacts of an El Niño in some African regions.
Forecasts
Forecast information
The better (that is, the more reliable) the forecast, the more likely it will be used effectively. Also, the more detailed the forecast, the more widespread will be its use. Forecasts are needed that provide adequate lead time for making plans to cope with the climate-related problems that an El Niño spawns. Some people argue that forecasts about the potential societal impacts in various parts of the globe are needed more urgently than are the forecasts of El Niño's onset. ENSO-related forecasts should be of interest to all government ministries and not just those concerned with disasters or with agriculture.
The lessons learned by each of the sixteen country-study teams for their countries centered around several of the following factors. There is a lack of belief in the reliability of El Niño-related forecasts for many regions around the globe. To date most forecasts are presented in terms of whole countries (e.g., Ethiopia, Mozambique, Indonesia, will be affected by severe drought; Peru and the USA will be affected by heavy rains and floods). Yet, such geographically generalized forecasts are at risk of being seen as failures by different regions within a country. Information about potential sub-national impacts is often absent, even though the local users of these forecasts desperately need detailed information in the forecasts for effective planning. Such detail includes information about the probable onset of the event and its likely societal impacts, its magnitude, its duration, and so forth. Armed with such details, governments could identify changes in the level of risk to its food-producing regions by determining if those regions are at increased risk for drought or flood. If so, they could plan to adjust their food exports and imports accordingly. The operations of the Panama Canal provide another example: canal operators need the earliest warning possible in order to advise shipping companies of the increased likelihood for drought-related, shipping restrictions in the canal. This would provide shippers with enough lead time to plan when and what to ship through the canal, whether to ship around it or whether to ship their cargo by other means.
There are other troublesome concerns for the users of forecasts: for example, which forecaster(s) should the users believe? Now, with the advent of widespread public and government interest in El Niño and with the growing access to the Internet, users are increasingly bombarded with scores of predictions about the future state of sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. How are they to distinguish between the established reliable forecasting groups and the numerous ad hoc groups and individuals that suddenly engage in the making of forecasts about the onset of an El Niño? For example, only one forecast group made a reasonable forecast of the onset of the 1997-98 El Niño (Barnston et al., 1999; Landsea et el., 1999). But, was it based on good science or just a lucky guess? How well did that group do with previous forecasts? Why did the dozen or so forecast groups miss making a correct forecast of the biggest El Niño of the Century in 1997-98? El Niño research and forecast communities must determine how best to remedy this situation, so that users can identify and rely on forecasts issued by reliable sources.
This problem is made more difficult by the fact that the forecasters of El Niño have had a mixed record of success and failure. In the world of forecasting, such a mixed record of success and failure can lead to a popular belief that the forecasts of ENSO's extremes are not very reliable, despite the fact that there may be an occasional success. It is important to underscore the fact that the record of success for forecasting El Niño's (and La Niña's) impacts has been considerably better for some locations than it has been for forecasting the onset of the event itself.
Despite the scientific uncertainties surrounding the forecasting of ENSO's extremes, researchers must work harder to convince policy makers at all levels of government that there is considerable value in the use of basic ENSO information (referred to here as "ENSO climatology"). Such basic information can be used as a guide to pro-active planning for El Niño-related disaster response and for long-term sustainable development. It is imperative that the research and forecast communities identify ways to reduce the level of public skepticism about the reliability of climate and weather forecasts.
One factor that leads to skepticism about forecasts (and, therefore, to inaction following the issuance of an El Niño forecast) is related to contradictory signals. For example, it is difficult for decision makers to believe forecasters that a drought will be coming, if the country is in the midst of a rainy period, or vice versa. As another example, in the midst of a good commercial fishing season, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to convince fishermen and fishmeal processing plant owners that fish catches will drop drastically some months in the future because an El Niño episode might be emerging. Making such projections is as risky for the forecasters as it is for users who take such projections seriously enough to act on them. In many countries forecasters fear that they will have to bear considerable personal responsibility for incorrect actions that decision makers might take, if the forecasts are off the mark and disaster ensues. From the perspective of forecasters, it may be safer in many instances to avoid making assertive forecasts that might prove to be controversial later.
The public, policy makers, and educators must be introduced to the many ways that climate variability influences human activities and ecological processes. They also need to know about the various ways that climate forecasts can be used in the sustainable development of society and economy.
Societal Aspects
Societal aspects of the 1997-98 El Niño, as identified in the sixteen country case studies, encompass forecast use, public education, science education, research funding, preparedness at the local level, and the role of the media.
Usefulness of forecasts
It is easy to show that El Niño forecasts can be very useful to societies – to governments as well as to individuals. While people may understand to some extent the climate of the region in which they live, they are not necessarily aware of the many direct and indirect ways that its variations (some of which are associated with El Niño) can influence their livelihoods. However, society's members have to learn how best to use that forecast information for disaster preparedness in the short term and economic development planning for the long term. How to educate society about climate-society-environment interactions is a major challenge to the meteorological community and to educators at all levels.
Public education
Scientists and the media have helped to make El Niño a household word, beginning with the 1982-83 El Niño. Their task received a major boost with the onset of the 1997-98 "El Niño of the Century." This event captured the attention of potential users about El Niño in general and of El Niño forecasts specifically. As a result, people around the globe have a heightened, but not yet complete, awareness of what impacts an event can have in their regions. Many people, including policy makers, are aware of it, even if that awareness is incomplete or incorrect. No matter, because when El Niño returns they will be attuned to the fact that it could influence climate conditions in various parts of the globe. In a sense, scientists have successfully broadcast ("wholesaled") the notion of El Niño. The next stage is an even harder activity for physical and social scientists and the media, the need to educate various elements in society about the details associated with an event (i.e., they have to "retail" El Niño information). "Retailing" an El Niño forecast, for example, refers to adjusting it to the different needs of specific users. Such retailing means that public awareness, training, and education programs need to be carried out, especially in the at-risk areas.
As uncertain and as unspecific as an El Niño forecast may still be, people must be taught about the El Niño phenomenon and how best to cope with both the forecasts and the event itself. As difficult as it may be for forecasters to explain extreme weather or climate anomaly probabilities to the public, the scientific community must respond to the challenge of conveying probabilistic statements in terms that are readily understandable to the general public. It is important, however, to help people to realize that, even though they improve their understanding of El Niño and make preparations in response to an El Niño forecast, there will still be adverse impacts with which they will have to contend. Even a perfect forecast will not lead to "zero" adverse impacts. The most industrialized societies have difficulties in their attempts to protect their countries (i.e., what they have called "climate-proofing") from the vagaries of climate and from extreme climate-related events. For example, in the mid-1970s the Canadian government embarked on a program to "drought-proof" the Canadian Prairie Provinces. Yet, droughts continued to plague the region. As another example, in the year 2000 the US government sought to "weatherproof" the United States, only to suffer from the adverse (and humiliating) impacts of a major surprising snowstorm just a week after the slogan was launched. Thus, neither the Canadian nor the American ambitious program achieved its goal.
A first step toward educating people about the ENSO cycle and its extremes involves "educating the educators." Educators would, in turn, educate the public. Today, when an event is underway, the public tends to blame many of society's ills on El Niño. Yet, many of those ills may have nothing to do with the appearance of an El Niño. By "educating the educators," researchers can help the public and the media to identify by themselves which ills might legitimately be blamed on El Niño and which might be blamed on other factors such as human activities. The need for climate-related education will vary from country to country, sector to sector, and from user to user.
While El Niño is considered by many observers to be a global phenomenon, it is really in a strict sense a regional (i.e., Pacific Ocean) phenomenon with worldwide local effects. Therefore, inhabitants of affected regions need a much-improved understanding of the ENSO cycle and its potential direct and indirect societal and ecological impacts at the local level. Education, as an aspect of capacity building within a country, must be carried out at all levels of society and not just geared to the highest political levels. Such education would go a long way toward improving societal interactions with the climate system in general and, more specifically, with the ENSO cycle.
Education about El Niño includes identifying its positive effects as well. It would also include discussions of a principle based on the idea of "doing no harm," as a result of decisions. This is referred to as the "precautionary principle." Perhaps one of the most important challenges to social researchers is to identify mechanisms to convert awareness of the ENSO cycle and its potential impacts into effective public action to cope with them.
Although we refer to each of ENSO's extremes – El Niño and La Niña – as a discrete event, society should view them as extreme parts of the ENSO cycle – an ongoing process – much in the same way that it views the seasons. A normal range between the extremes of sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific is also part of this cycle. In fact, some scientists refer to ENSO's extremes as the second biggest climate-related disrupters of human activities, after the natural flow of seasonal change.
Science education
Governments must support education and training programs that produce personnel in their different ministries who can understand and use information derived from monitoring and predicting regional climate in general and, more specifically, El Niño and its impacts. They need to reinforce existing programs such as those that include the training of disaster managers, impacts researchers, and those who are responsible for identifying a country's at-risk (i.e., vulnerable) populations.
Funding
Many problems that a government faces that relate to difficulties in dealing with the forecasting of and responding to disasters center on inadequate funding. Several of the countries that are considered to be most vulnerable to El Niño's impacts are especially in need of financial assistance to carry out programs to cope with their possible occurrence. While the will of a government to take appropriate actions may exist once an El Niño event has been forecast, the financial mechanisms must be in place to enable the government to carry out those actions. Otherwise, there will be little in the way of financial means to put the government's will into action.
Along the same line, disaster-related funding from a national government to its regional and local governments needs to be made quickly in order to enable the funds to be used in the affected regions in an effective and timely way. This would make it possible for those responsible at the local level to be pro-active, as they are truly on the frontlines of disaster impact, response, reconstruction, recovery, and sustainable development. International funding responses to a disaster must also occur quickly to be used effectively by those in the affected regions. More importantly, such funds must be made available between ENSO's extremes, not only during them. This would enable preventive measures to be developed and implemented under normal, non-crisis conditions.
Media
Many people assume that a major, if not primary, function of a country's print and broadcast media is to educate the public. However, the media, in addition to providing information to society at large, are in the business of making a profit. Aside from El Niño's news content and value, the media are interested in reporting about it, as long as they perceive a value in doing so. For example, once scientists had compared the emerging 1997-98 El Niño to the devastating 1982-83 event, the media interest increased because that historical analogy to a memorable, devastating El Niño would likely capture the attention of the public. With today's media globalization of local news stories, coverage about El Niño's impacts elsewhere on the globe in 1997-98 served to elevate the concern of the public about possible impacts in their own countries, as well as to educate the public.
Once an event ends, however, media interest quickly wanes. El Niño researchers, and not just the national meteorological services, must strive to educate the media on the importance of El Niño to society and to encourage the media to run public education stories about the ENSO cycle between, as well as during, its extreme events. While the media does educate the public to some degree, that responsibility really falls on the shoulders of scientific researchers. They must devise ways to better educate the media on what is known and what is not yet known about the phenomenon.
Now that the public's interest in El Niño and La Niña has been heightened and broadened, it will likely become more demanding for information about them (including forecasts). The public will likely become more critical about the information it receives. The best way to meet that demand would be for those concerned with El Niño to maintain a steady level of El Niño-related impacts research throughout the entire ENSO warm event-cold event cycle. This is much more beneficial than focusing on the extremes only when they are in progress.
Science Issues
The levels of scientific development vary widely from country to country. They vary as well among regions within a country. Some governments have placed a high value on maintaining a strong national research establishment, while others consider that to be a lower priority than dealing with chronic societal problems such as high unemployment, widespread poverty, and poor public health. Other governments chose not to use their scarce resources in a competition with other countries to produce global climate and climate-related assessments. Rather, they have chosen to receive such assessments from elsewhere and then to modify them to meet national and local conditions and needs. In fact, the establishment in the late 1990s of the International Research Institute for climate prediction (IRI) at Columbia University (New York) was an attempt to assist researchers in other countries in the modification of global climate forecasts to reflect regional and local factors.
Scientific research importance
In the age of globalization of just about everything, it is important for governments to maintain a national scientific establishment that is capable of using research results from other countries for its societal benefit. More specifically, it is especially important for at-risk countries to improve the ability of their scientific communities to understand the ENSO cycle and its implications for decision making by individuals, corporations, government agencies, and national policy makers. This is prudent because preventive measures can then be pursued, and prevention and mitigation is often less costly than recovery and restoration.
The national scientific establishments should be encouraged as well as supported by their governments to undertake studies on actual and perceived regional and local teleconnections related to ENSO's extremes. The carrying out of such studies would also help to strengthen national expertise in El Niño studies. This is an area of capacity building where donor assistance is beneficial and needed. To reinforce such a scientific capacity-building effort, it is important for national governments to give significant weight to the assessments and views of their national scientists. In the past, some governments have tended to give greater credence to the assessments of foreign experts than to their own national experts. This perception of expertise that – "experts come from out of town" – must change, because it is often incorrect.
An important, often-downplayed aspect of scientific research is that researchers must demonstrate to government officials on a continuing basis the importance to their country of understanding and using information about climate variability, climate change, and extreme events. This includes El Niño and La Niña, which tend to spawn certain types of climate-related extremes in specific locations around the globe.
Scientific communication
As the impacts of an El Niño ripple through the environment, society, and economy, a cascade of uncertainties will accompany those impacts from first (direct) to second (indirect) to third order (called "knock-on") effects. The increase in the levels of certainty that surrounds these various knock-on effects must be accurately conveyed by scientists to the users of El Niño information.
In addition to scientific research on the physical and societal impacts of El Niño, it is very important to encourage research on the socio-economic setting of each country at the time of onset. The impacts of El Niño can clearly be mitigated or worsened by the existing conditions of the country's political system, infrastructures, environment, and economy. Because these socio-economic and political conditions vary over time, an El Niño of the same magnitude in the same place but at a different time can generate totally different impacts. Thus, there is a strong need for multidisciplinary studies that involve the physical and social sciences and the humanities.
Many regional and local El Niño-related impacts are hazards that are most likely already known to the inhabitants of a region (e.g., droughts, floods, frosts, fires, heat waves). El Niño or La Niña episodes can weaken the "normal" intensity of the hazard and reduce its impacts, or they can intensify them. Thus, in most instances, governments are already aware to some extent about how to respond in a tactical (ad hoc) way to their known hazards. The El Niño connection to a specific hazard provides decision makers with a degree of forecast and earliest warning skill that would otherwise be absent. However, they do not often know the exact timing of the different phases of El Niño, or its duration or intensity and, therefore, they do not know exactly how an El Niño episode will influence the characteristics of their known climate-related hazards.
Institutional Response
Once a president or a prime minister (i.e., a head of state) publicly expresses concern about El Niño, his or her government tends to become quickly mobilized to deal with it. Clearly, this was the case at the onset of the 1997-98 event in Peru (see, for example, Fujimori, 2001) and in Ecuador, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Ethiopia.
Interagency cooperation
Various government ministries need to be involved in El Niño-related activities from research to response, because no single ministry is capable of coping with the wide range of potential impacts. Different agencies have different experience and expertise that would likely be required at various times throughout the ENSO warm event-cold event cycle. However, only one agency should be responsible for final actions, so that lines of authority and responsibility are clearly identified. Involved agencies should include those related to disaster management, climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, energy, public safety, and health, as well as those concerned with economic development. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should also be included from the outset in El Niño-related activities.
As noted earlier, cooperation should be fostered among decision makers at the highest levels of government. Ministerial rivalries (which exist in every country) must be put aside in the face of possible El Niño-related disasters. The establishment of an inter-ministerial task force devoted to ENSO (as was done in several countries such as Peru and the Philippines) could help to better coordinate overlapping ministerial efforts and to reduce chronic jurisdictional disputes. Good cooperation and communication among a country's scientific institutions could go a long way toward producing a coherent message about El Niño to policy makers and to the public.
Government and private institutions must review their operations that were carried out during the 1997-98 El Niño event in order to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and institutional constraints and conflicts in their responses to the forecasts and to the impacts of a major El Niño event. Although limited national resources (such as time and people) make it difficult to review past events, their impacts, and a government's responses, "hindcasting," a process undertaken to distinguish between those strategies and tactics that worked and those that did not, must be supported by governments. A Chinese proverb underscores this point: "To know the road ahead, ask those coming back."
Often, donor agencies tend to treat the recipients of disaster aid as being in a relatively inferior bargaining position. However, for effective and timely disaster reduction and eventual recovery and sustainable development planning, international donors and recipients must interact as equal negotiating partners. Donors and recipients alike must rethink the validity of the generally accepted, but questionable, budgetary distinctions that they make between emergency disaster relief and long-term development assistance.
National governments in a geographic region should consider creating a supra-national regional organization devoted strictly to the ENSO phenomenon, as has been done by the countries along the Pacific coast of South America. Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia formed the CPPS (Permanent South Pacific Commission) and in 1974 they created ERFEN (Regional Study of the El Niño Phenomenon). ENSO's warm extreme is an important disrupter of national economies and national well-being. Its impacts do not respect international borders. Regional El Niño-related (and La Niña-related) disaster plans can be developed less expensively than if each country in a region were to go its own way, as has generally been the case. Even if neighboring countries are at odds over a variety of issues, the threat of adverse ENSO-related disasters can spark a modicum of "disaster diplomacy." This appears to have been the case in Central America, following the devastation caused by Hurricane Mitch in late October 1998. It also appears to be the case for US-Cuban relations with regard to hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico (Glantz, 2000).
Setting (Social, Economic, and Political)
When it comes to discussing possible ways to reduce the influence of El Niño's impacts on a country's socio-economic and political background that existed at the time of its onset, many comments appear to be no more than political rhetoric (i.e., "motherhood" statements). Few people could find good reasons to disagree with such platitudes: "strengthen the economy," "reduce poverty," "saving lives is the highest priority," "maintain the infrastructure." The reality, however, is that when it comes to the potential impacts of natural hazards, including those sparked by El Niño, such motherhood statements are highly relevant to reducing vulnerability to natural hazards. For example, it is not difficult to show that transportation infrastructure that has not been maintained (as in Kenya, for instance) will likely face destruction during El Niño-related severe floods. Nor is it difficult to show that an unstable political system (as in Ecuador at the time) cannot effectively cope with the societal impacts of El Niño-related anomalies. Thus, what a society is like at the time of an El Niño episode has a great deal to do with the level of damage it is likely to sustain as a result of that event.
Reassessing the way things are
Many adjustments are likely to be required in the ways that societies operate to make El Niño's forecasts, as the earliest warnings of possible climate-related problems, more effective. Such societal adjustments might include, for example, a review of bank credit policies, a strengthening of infrastructure for transportation, communication, and public health, and making assessments to identify and devise ways to protect the currently at-risk populations, regions, and socio-economic sectors. Also, the nature and degree of present-day environmental degradation must be taken into account in these assessments because the impacts of El Niño can magnify existing degradation in different locations.
As with other sectors of society, in the case of public health many factors can interact to make an existing poor human health situation much worse in the event of an El Niño, e.g., existing poverty (such as in Bangladesh where cholera outbreaks accompany an El Niño, see Pascual et al., 2000), an economic "meltdown" (as was the case in Asia in the late 1990s), inadequate public health facilities, and even IMF's restructuring policies (as was the case during the 1991-92 El Niño in Zimbabwe, see Betsill et al., 1997). Thus, a corps of national researchers, financed by their governments and international donors, are needed in order to distinguish more clearly between impacts that can be linked to a naturally occurring El Niño episode from those that result from human activities.
The inter- and intra-national "brain drain"
Developing countries face a seemingly intractable problem, a "brain drain" problem, as trained personnel leave their countries to join UN and other international organizations and non-governmental organizations. The South-to-North "brain drain" issue must be addressed in an international forum to identify ways to minimize in an equitable way the outflow of expertise from the developing to the industrialized world. The "brain drain" also occurs within countries, because trained personnel are forced to take additional jobs in order to support their families. They are forced to do so, because the pay for their scientific research work is often insufficient to meet the basic needs of their families.
Political change
A change in government is yet another obvious, but often overlooked, factor affecting a country's ability to respond to recurrent hazards (such as those spawned by El Niño and La Niña). When a government is changed, whether by violent or non-violent means, the incoming government often discards many of the policies put in place by its predecessor. That's politics. However, when it comes to disaster preparedness, including that for El Niño responses, it is imperative for the incoming government administration to first reassess the effectiveness of its predecessor's policies before discarding or neglecting them for no good reason other than domestic politics.
Conflicting Interests
In just about every country there are jurisdictional disputes and political rivalries among various government ministries and agencies. These conflicts must be minimized, if not set aside, when dealing with El Niño, so that they do not interfere with either the timely flow of information or the undertaking of effective mitigative actions. There may, for example, be differences of opinion between a nation's weather service and its ministry of agriculture about whether a forecast of drought is reliable or whether a drought already exists. There are likely to be differences in policy responses between agencies dealing with emergency assistance and those dealing with long-term sustainable development activities. Conflicts also exist between donors of disaster aid and recipients of that aid over approaches to coping with El Niño-related impacts. In fact, there are even rivalries, subtle though they may be, among donor agencies representing different countries or international organizations, but each with its own objectives. Provincial governments and municipalities, too, find themselves engaged in disputes with their national government over local resource needs and the resource allocation for disaster preparation or recovery in their areas. In this regard, there is a need to improve the level of trust between these levels of government.
Conflicting interests among citizens (or economic classes) within a country, for example, between the "haves" and the "have nots," are worsened in times of climate-related emergencies. It is often the poorer populations that live in at-risk areas such as floodplains or on steep, unstable hillsides and, as a result, tend to suffer an inordinate proportion of damage to life and property. During such times of emergency need, government actions could serve to close that gap between these two groups by providing, with donor support, appropriate and timely assistance.
As noted earlier, it is important to recognize the fact that, no matter how well a society might prepare for the potential impacts of an El Niño event, it is still likely to suffer significant damage. Making the public aware of this fact should help to minimize criticism of governmental responses to those impacts once the emergency has ended. Governments have to cope with many issues and problems simultaneously – climatic, hydrological, geological, political, demographic, economic and military – often with very limited resources. In a paired comparison between these problems and climate issues, problems related to climate might not, at the time, be considered to be as important as other pressing social, economic, political, or military issues.
In addition, there are varied impacts within a country and sometimes an expected climate anomaly (such as a drought or a flood) does not occur but an unexpected one does. Governments cannot prepare for all possible El Niño-related hazards, so they must weigh the risks, making difficult choices about which hazard(s) is (are) the one(s) to which they are most likely to have to respond.
Diverting limited available resources to deal with potential El Niño-related problems that might arise in future months or years is a difficult action for many government decision makers to take, especially if there are no visible signs (as yet) of their negative impacts. Regardless of the recognized value of pro-action to deal with its impacts, considerations of El Niño's impacts are often delayed in favor of other pressing issues... until the next event has been forecast or, in some cases, until the impacts of the next event begin to appear. Sometimes proposed pro-active responses will not be pursued because previous forecasts of an El Niño's impact had not proven to be correct. For example, considerable skepticism has developed in Mozambique because of the loss of credibility as a result of a missed El Niño-related drought forecast for southern Africa in 1997-98. In that period Mozambique's climate turned out to be near normal even though the government had prepared for a drought. The forecast failed because forecasters did not take into consideration the unusually warm sea surface temperatures in the western Indian Ocean. How will this "missed" forecast influence the country's response to the next El Niño-related drought forecast? Yet, it is important to educate the public that a missed forecast does not mean that a forecast system does not work. Forecasts are based on probabilities, and a number of them are expected to be "missed."
Management Issues
There are several management issues generated by El Niño-related impacts and forecasts. First, there should be transparency in those agencies dealing with those impacts and forecasts. Transparency means that there will be openness and honesty in information about the El Niño phenomenon, about the forecast, and about its potential impacts. It also means that potentially at-risk regions, populations and sectors would be identified and notified in a timely way. A country's disaster plans and policies need to be backed up by adequate expertise and funding. In order to do so, national expertise should be maintained, if not strengthened, over time so that government agencies can call on it for ENSO-related experience and advice whenever the need arises. Funding from donor agencies is an extremely important aspect of national disaster response for a variety of reasons: it would help to build national expertise (capacity building); it would show commitment of donors to effective disaster reduction; it would enhance the prospects for long-term planning instead of fostering a reliance on ad hoc decisions; it could enhance logistical efficiency; it could enable a government to maintain its infrastructures (transportation, health, communications); and so forth.
It is important for the donors and the recipient governments to improve their trust, dialogue and relationship with each other in order to enhance the timeliness of response and appropriateness of assistance. Recipients have a responsibility to get funding to the at-risk regions in time for decision makers in those regions to prepare to cope with the potential impacts. Local people must be involved in the planning at the national level for responses to El Niño forecasts and impacts. If expertise is lacking at that level, then a comprehensive education and training program needs to be put in place.
One could argue that the ENSO cycle merits its own autonomous management structure. A well-defined El Niño emergency management structure encompassing national to local levels should be developed and maintained, even though El Niño (warm) events recur on an irregular time interval (recurring at some time between 2 and 10 years). Administratively, a lead agency, among equals, should be identified. Agencies involved in this structure must take their responsibilities seriously, as their particular expertise is likely to be required at different times during the ENSO cycle. Part of its responsibility would be to periodically review national and local disaster management plans. This can be done at low cost by, at first, evaluating their country's responses to the 1997-98 event or earlier events that had affected their country.
Communications
Throughout all levels of government from national to local, there is an urgent need to improve the efficiency and transmission (especially timeliness) of early warnings and forecasts of climate-related impacts associated with ENSO's extremes. The Internet provides a useful tool for closely watching changes in the ENSO cycle of warm and cold events. However, it should serve only to complement national efforts and not be viewed as a replacement for them.
Communication is essential between decision makers and scientists: scientists can learn about the needs of decision makers in government agencies and in various climate-sensitive social and economic sectors. For their part, decision makers can learn about the many ways that climate influences a disaster's severity as well as their country's long-term economic development prospects. Realistic communications means that scientists would refrain from the use of scientific jargon to ensure that decision makers understand well the limits and value of using climate and climate-related information. This would strengthen the confidence that decision makers have in their country's scientific community. This would help to reduce their dependence on foreign expertise.
During climate-related emergencies, local governments and citizens are in need of uninterrupted contact with national agencies and international donors. A communication system must be developed that can withstand or bypass the disruptions that often occur during times of climate-related disasters, in general, and El Niño-related disasters, specifically.
People everywhere have criticized their national weather services for a wide range or reasons, often for what they perceive to be poor forecasting accuracy. The weather services, however, usually provide statistics to support their claims of the relative accuracy over time of their forecasts. Thus, the national weather services must improve their communications with the general public in an effort to demonstrate their multifaceted value to society, despite the scientific uncertainties that are inherent in the atmospheric and oceanic processes that they analyze.
A considerable amount of human and financial resources go directly as well as indirectly toward research on El Niño and, more generally, into the physical and biological sciences. Much less goes to the social science research community for research on El Niño-related socio-economic and political impacts. Yet, each of these research communities contributes in significant ways to the understanding of the ENSO phenomenon or its impacts on society and environment. Because there is a disciplinary divide among these communities, communication and appreciation of each other's contributions to societal well-being must be improved. For their part, government agencies and NGOs must strive to improve the quality of their communications and interactions, because many of their activities and concerns are complementary, if not overlapping, when it comes to hazards related to ENSO's warm and cold extremes.
The donor community often tends to impose its perception of national needs during disasters, when in fact it may not be the best judge of a specific country's local needs. Thus, governments need to improve their communications with donors and vice versa, so that national requests for assistance are considered to be in balance with the needs at hand.
Forecasting by Analogy (FBA)
Forecasting by Analogy (FBA) is an approach used to identify strengths and weaknesses in societal responses to climate-related impacts that occurred in the recent past. Such an assessment enables societies to maintain their identified strengths and to reduce the weaknesses in their actual responses to those impacts. In this assessment, researchers looked for societal responses to the 1997-98 "El Niño of the Century" in order to identify various ways to reduce their society's vulnerability to El Niño-related disasters and to improve society's ability to recover (i.e., ensure societal resilience) once the disaster has passed. The FBA approach is based on the premise that societal institutions in the near future will be like those of the recent past and, therefore, lessons learned as a result of "hindcasting" will be useful to decision makers, at least for the near future.
Forecasting by analogy can provide a government (and society in general) with quantitative and qualitative information on the impacts of previous El Niño events. While there is no certainty about the similarity of future impacts to those of the past, an historical retrospective does provide a glimpse of a range of possibilities of El Niño-related impacts for which a society might better prepare.
All governments should take the opportunity to look back to the 1997-98 El Niño event, and to the lengthy 1998-2000 La Niña event as well. A retrospective assessment would help them to gain insights into how such changes in sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean might affect their local climate regimes for good and for ill. FBA can provide disaster agencies with an opportunity to review how well their contingency plans worked in 1997-98 and, if necessary, make adjustments to them. This can be done agency by agency as well as at the inter-ministerial task force level.
Such retrospectives can provide ideas in a preliminary way about the strengths and weaknesses of their institutions, when confronted by an ENSO extreme. For example, given the known linkages between an El Niño and the increase in forest fires in Indonesia (and the resultant haze throughout Southeast Asia), that government must maintain fire prevention programs and enforce compliance with them. National researchers should be encouraged and supported financially (domestically and internationally) to undertake their own comprehensive national assessments.
FBA assessments provide a government with insights into regions, sectors, and populations that are likely to be at increased risk during an El Niño event. For example, since the early 1970s, many researchers have focused on El Niño's impacts on Peruvian fisheries but few, if any, had given any thought to its devastating impacts on Peru's textile industry as the result of an unexpected warm winter in the country. As another example, the 1997-98 El Niño had a negative effect on the mining sector in Papua New Guinea, because the Fly River went dry as a result of a severe prolonged drought. As a result, supplies could not be shipped by river transportation into or out of the mining region. Thus, FBA can help government agencies and corporations to produce El Niño (and La Niña) vulnerability maps. However, it would be misleading for decision makers to rely only on information about the last El Niño (or La Niña).
Countries in the process of strengthening their scientific establishments can in the meantime use FBA techniques to provide an improved understanding of climate-sensitive physical processes and of how those processes interact with human activities and ecological processes, and to identify potential El Niño-related problems before they occur. El Niño events come in different strengths, and various aspects of society are constantly changing. As a result, the impacts from one event to the next will not be exactly the same, even though there are likely to be some similarities.
Capacity Building
Many countries are in need of human capacity building in the area of climate impacts research in general and in ENSO-related sustainable development and disaster planning, specifically. Government agencies, policy makers, and the wide range of users of climate and weather information need to be made aware of the many not-so-obvious ways that climate variability affects their activities. Knowledge of the ENSO cycle is important to them, because it has predictive skill associated with it. It therefore lends itself to strategic decision making.
Educators at all levels in a country's educational system should encourage their students to study climate-society-environment interactions. Governments should encourage their personnel to do the same, especially during those periods when there is no imminent threat of a disaster. While climate may prove not to have been the most important factor at a given point in time, its influence on human activities must be taken into serious consideration early in the decision-making processes.
Building national capacity with regard to climate issues (climate change and variability as well as ENSO and other climate-related extreme events) can reduce a country's dependence on outside expertise, if not for monitoring or forecasting, at least for analyzing the information it receives directly from abroad or by way of the Internet. This would help to improve the level of trust and respect between disaster-aid recipients and donors, when it comes to coping with disasters.
Global forecasts, and even regional ones, issued at the onset of an El Niño event do not provide enough detailed information for forecast users at the local level. More attention should be given to identify methods to convert global forecasts of ENSO to local forecasts which will have credibility at those levels. Local capacity building geared toward the interpretation of global forecasts and analyzing them for local use is an important aspect of disaster reduction.
While the earliest of warnings about climate-related problems can be made available to the public, people require education and training to interpret and use such warnings. For effective disaster mitigation, this expertise needs to be in place before the onset of a potentially disruptive El Niño event.
Capacity building at the national level can create and foster multidisciplinary expertise about El Niño, while at the same time broaden the country's existing disciplinary expertise. Both perspectives (disciplinary and multidisciplinary) are needed for effective pro-active participation in national and international activities related to climate issues (e.g., research programs, education and training activities, workshops, conferences, and scientific visits).
Forecasting-by-analogy studies (such as retrospective assessments or hindcasting exercises) can be accomplished at little, if any, cost to national governments and can build a solid foundation for the sustained societal understanding of climate-society-environment interactions. They can provide a government with a "nothing to lose, something to gain" situation.
References
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