Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 31, 1995                   TAG: 9501310112
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: D. JAMES BAKER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

FORECASTING

The National Weather Service forecast the rains a few days before they came. Even these forecasts were possible only because we have made a long-term investment in a world-class weather service for this nation.

But an earlier warning would have been much better. What if it had been possible to say with some confidence last spring that the 1995 rainy season on the West Coast would be unusually heavy? We couldn't have stopped the rain, but it certainly would have made the story a very different one.

Had public officials, local industry and the population at large been informed several months in advance, utility and water companies could have been prepared, and emergency services temporarily augmented. Industries that rely on trucking could have increased volume in earlier months, tourists and travelers could have altered plans, and city officials could have removed vulnerable trees along highways or sandbagged hillsides.

That's why research in this area merits being called investment: The potential returns are enormous. Some of them are already maturing in the knowledge gained by U.S. scientists and their colleagues around the world of one of the principal global causes of natural climate variability: the phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean called El Nino.

Oceanographers and meteorologists have recently uncovered a simple, elegant explanation of how the ocean and atmosphere act together in close concert to create El Nino and thereby influence climate worldwide. They have managed to capture this dynamic relationship in computer-generated models with considerable skill in forecasting climate variations up to a year in advance of the onset of El Nino.

The predictability of climate trends based on the existence of El Nino conditions has been demonstrated most clearly in the tropics. In South America, where El Nino conditions have been recognized for hundreds of years, government resource-planners have been working with climate scientists to alter crop selection and planting schedules on the basis of climate forecasts and analysis of local climate conditions.

In Peru, advance information about the relative likelihood of a wetter than normal year during an El Nino contributes to the decision to increase rice production, a crop amenable to more abundant precipitation, and decrease cotton production, for which drier conditions are more favorable. Brazilians have enjoyed remarkable yields by using similar techniques. These advances hold great potential for contributing to the world's search for ecologically sustainable practices that inspire economic efficiency and opportunity.

El Nino conditions in 1991-92 were a principal contributing factor to severe drought and associated reduction in agricultural yields throughout southern Africa, Indonesia and northeastern Australia, to the drought in Northeastern Brazil and to localized flooding in southwestern South America. Early research efforts to better understand the impact of El Nino climate trends are also uncovering associations between patterns of floods and droughts and the creation of environmental conditions hospitable to the emergence and spread of vector-borne diseases and the recent outbreak of cholera in South America.

What does all of this mean in terms of heavy rain in California? That's a tough question to answer. From what we know today, El Nino oceanic and atmospheric conditions only slightly different from those we are now experiencing could possibly lead to drought in the West instead of flooding. We simply do not fully understand the interaction between the global El Nino phenomenon and more localized climate influences.

We do know enough about El Nino to make unlocking the secrets of its influence in the higher latitudes a tractable research problem. But providing information to mitigate the sort of weather-induced trauma experienced on the West Coast would take several more years of sustained research activity. Our goal is to provide the public with the means to act upon our knowledge that next year's weather will be significantly different from this year's. Simply planning for normal conditions is not good economic or social policy.

The routine publication by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of a long-term climate forecast begins this month. It is our first operational achievement toward this goal, and while the forecast is still rudimentary, it is a beginning.

If we'd been able to produce a forecast last spring that California would be deluged this winter, it would have been worth whatever research investment was involved, if only because of the human misery it would have relieved.

The United States is leading an initiative to work with partner nations to exploit this predictive capability in affected countries, beginning with those in the tropics. By doing so, we leverage governmental investment in the global oceanic- and atmospheric-observing systems to environmental monitoring, and stand to acquire the insight critically necessary for further advances in predictive capability useful to our own part of the world. We also contribute to the broader effort to provide information useful to people in need of efficient management options for food, water and energy.

D. James Baker is administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere.

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