“El Niño” accurately predicted
Earlier than ever before: German and Israeli scientists forecast the weather phenomenon over a year before it happened.
Risky it certainly was: A team of German and Israeli scientists decided over a year ago, back in autumn 2013, to publish an early warning of the “El Niño” weather phenomenon in a renowned scientific journal. They risked getting it wrong, and by extension trashing their own reputations. Because to date, reliable El-Niño forecasts have had a forward reach of six months at most. However, the scientists at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Giessen’s Justus Liebig University, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv were right. In mid-March, the US NOAA meteorological service confirmed that El Niño had arrived.
This breakthrough in predicting the most important natural climate phenomenon is the successful result of using a new algorithm based on a network analysis of air temperatures in the Pacific region. Such long-term predictions can help farmers in Brazil, Australia or India to prepare for the phenomenon and accordingly adjust when they plant their crops.
The discovery of the new method was first published in the summer of 2013 in an article in the renowned Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In the autumn of 2013 the new algorithm triggered the alarm and the research team resolved to publish the warning, again opting for the august pages of the PNAS.
To date, early warnings have had a lead-time of a maximum of six months, in which people above all in the Tropics and Sub-Tropics have had to prepare at irregular intervals (usually around Christmas time) to deal with the often catastrophic consequences of El Niño. These include empty fishing nets or, in Peru, streams that turn into torrents, or extended periods of drought in parts of South America, Indonesia, Australia and Africa.
The research team is now working to predict the duration and strength of an El-Niño occurrence accurately, too.
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