El Nino is back. And depending on where you live, that could be good or bad news.
The weather phenomenon caused by warming Pacific waters is expected to last into next year. We took a look at how El Nino will impact places differently through the eyes of the international media.
First, we go to
Radio Australia, where severe drought has plagued the region since 2002.
“We did get a lot of useful rainfall in the last two years, so this El Nino will not threaten major water supplies of the major cities... but clearly agriculture has been suffering and so if we do have another drought, it's just misery on top of misery I am afraid.”
But across the Pacific, El Nino is expected to alleviate dry conditions. Bill Patzert, a NASA climatologist, talked to
KTTV-Fox 11 in LA and had this to say about El Nino’s impact in California.
“For California, when it’s a big El Nino, that means it’s a wet winter, so we love El Nino… I always say hug your El Nino. We need those El Ninos because we’re bone dry right now. It’s so dry right now, the cows in Riverside are actually giving powdered milk.”
So far, nobody knows exactly how strong this year’s El Nino might be, but the mere speculation of its arrival has already affected some markets.
Forbes shows us the impact.
“News over the past few days that this El Nino may be weak to moderate led to a sell-off in Malaysian palm oil futures, which slid to a three-month low... [Meanwhile,] New York cocoa futures closed up $105, or 4.1 percent, helped by prospects that El Nino could affect cocoa supply…”
News of El Nino is also reverberating in Canada, where a dry winter threatens the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Seattle’s
KING 5 reports on how Olympic planners are preparing.
“Organizers said they have worked with forecasters and developed El Nino contingency plans, including using snow makers and snow blowers to get venues in Olympic condition. But that wasn’t the case earlier this year at Cypress Mountain, which will host Olympic snowboard and freestyle skiing events. A World Cup snowboard race was cancelled due to warm weather and poor conditions at the resort.”
While in some places, El Nino causes economic damage, in others it is a boon to agriculture. How will El Nino affect your area?
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