El Nino weather threat has eased, forecaster says
El Nino weather threat has eased, forecaster says
Bloomberg/Melbourne
El Nino weather conditions have eased in the past month, the
Australian government's weather forecaster said, lowering the
risk of a drought-induced slide in Southeast Asian palm oil
production.
"The progress towards an El Nino event this year has slowed
over the past month, as a consistent pattern of Pacific wind and
cloud signatures has failed to materialize," the Commonwealth
Bureau of Meteorology said in a report on its Web site.
The bureau in Melbourne said a month ago that climate
indicators suggested an El Nino was close to emerging.
The weather pattern occurs when sea surface temperatures in
the equatorial Pacific Ocean remain above average for more than
several months.
It can trigger atmospheric and weather changes around the
globe.
Palm oil prices in Malaysia, the world's top grower and
exporter of the commodity, used in food preparation, rose more
than 8 percent during August amid concern an emerging El Nino
would bring dry weather and reduce production.
"El Nino is not likely to come and 2004 is likely to be a
normal year" for rainfall, said Maruli Gultom, president of PT
Astra Agro Lestari, Indonesia's biggest publicly traded
agricultural company.
"This month we expect an increase in production from our
Sumatra plantations because there's been plenty of rain."
Plantations in Kalimantan and Sulawesi may yield less oil than
a month ago because of drier weather, he said.
"Sea surface temperatures in the western to central Pacific
have hovered near El Nino thresholds for about two months now,
but subsurface temperatures are well below the levels normally
associated with El Nino," the Australian weather bureau said.
Palm oil for January delivery rose 27 ringgit, or 2 percent,
to 1,401 ringgit on the Malaysian Derivatives Exchange at 12:29
p.m. in Kuala Lumpur.
Prices have fallen 18 percent in the past year because of
record U.S. production of soybeans, a rival source of vegetable
oil.