Monitoring and Early Warning Systems Related to the El-Niño Phenomenon — An Overview

Abstract

The presentations in this followed the given outline, except for the last presentation by Akentyeva and Kobysheva on ‘climatic forecast of natural disasters and calculation of hazard of damage to economies’ which could not be given since the authors did not attend the IDNDR Conference. Thus all presentations were invited presentations, focussing on the breakthrough in seasonal climate variability predictions. For the first time, mankind can use physically based predictions of climate variability that are probabilistic but have useful skill up to several seasons ahead especially in areas affected by the El-Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. The first presentation, by the convenor of the session, highlighted the basis of this breakthrough, the new observation system across the tropical Pacific, augmented by drifters, tide gauge stations and satellite altimeters.