Parts of the hemisphere devastated by El Nino

Parts of the hemisphere devastated by El Nino

By Peter Sartorius

MUNICH (DPA): Conflagrations in the dry-as-tinder tropical rain forests of Indonesia, torrential rainfall on the Pacific seaboard of South America, states of emergency declared in Bolivia and Peru. They come as no surprise to the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Hamburg.

"We could work out what was going to happen," says Mojib Latif. All he needed to do was to look at a computer graph on which the line has been moving steadily higher since the New Year.

At an early stage it seemed clear that the bout of climate fever which parts of the world are now undergoing, a fever that goes by the name of El Nino, was going to take a dramatic course.

To call it a fever is to use a misleading metaphor inasmuch as it is less a case of high temperature than of temperatures moving from one side of the Pacific to the other.

This year the warm trade winds that usually blow from east to west and pump warm Pacific water towards Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines failed to materialize.

In return, oceanically speaking, cold water rich in nutrients would be pumped towards the Pacific seaboard of South America, providing food for shoals of fish and the right weather for people on dry land. But not this year.

This year the cycle has ground to a halt because the pump is out of action. There is drought where it is usually warm and humid, humidity and torrential rain where it ought to be dry, and the seawater off the coast of Peru is warm and bereft of fish.

This is due to El Nino, Spanish for "The (Christ) Child," so called by Peruvian fishermen because the current that is so erratic normally peaks in December. But El Nino is also the accepted scientific name for the phenomenon.

It is a Pacific climate anomaly that has been under investigation by research scientists since the 1920s because its repercussions, in the manner of a chain reaction, affect the entire world.

But it still works in mysterious ways. El Nino used to occur every two to seven years. Was there any rhyme or reason in it? Scientific pondering on this point was superseded when, in the early 1990s, El Nino seemed to occur every year, although not always to an equally dramatic degree.

Was it just a quirk of nature? What tends to interest scientists such as Mojib Latif even more is its fluctuation in strength. In the winter of 1982/83 its force was unprecedented, shifting climate zones all over the world.

Fields were hit by drought in southern East Africa. Citrus fruit plantations were hit by frost in Florida. Spring temperatures prevailed in northern polar regions.

El Nino 1997 is looking even more feverish and dramatic. By the year's end it looks like becoming the biggest El Nino of all time. So the obvious question is whether it might have something to do with global warming, which in turn is largely due to manmade emissions of greenhouse gases.

Could it be that man himself is El Nino's progenitor? "A fundamental question," agrees Latif. But one that yet to be answered. Scientists are not even agreed on whether the data clearly indicate that El Nino is steadily gaining in strength.

A few surprise upward swings of the pendulum may not prove much, but what is known for sure is the effect that they have. And you can project the figures.

The international economic damage done by El Nino in 1982/83 is estimated to have totaled US$13 billion. If this year's El Nino is even more powerful, then the damage should be even greater.

But it isn't as easy as that, of course. Climatology has progressed and can spot El Nino sooner, serving as an early warning system so that countries can adjust their agriculture accordingly. In 1982/83 Peru's gross national product nosedived; this year it might be better prepared.

But there are few precautions that can be taken against landslides caused by torrential rainfall or against fires that occur during a drought. And what is the tourist trade in Florida to do if cold descends and vacationers don't?

How, for that matter, are the authorities to cope with the malaria that seems sure to proliferate in parts of South America when dry countryside is transformed into warm and humid country? How, above all, is one to prevent the forests of Indonesia from burning like tinder? Mojib Latif is expecting more such bad news in the weeks and months ahead -- from all over the world.

El Nino will naturally hit the Pacific region particularly hard, but no-one is sure how it will affect in other parts of the world. "Nature," Latif says, "is not just El Nino."

Weather forecasts are always a matter of probability. "If we estimate the likelihood of a cold spell occurring somewhere to be 70 percent," he says, "that still leaves 30 percent." This is the leeway for hopes that we might be let off lightly.