| COMMUNITY |
| Message Boards Chat Feedback |
| SITE SOURCES |
| Contents Help! Search CNN Networks |
| SPECIALS |
| Quick News Almanac Video Vault News Quiz |
|
| S P E C I A L | El Niño Returns |
Study tallies worth of El Niño forecasting
Annual benefits to the agricultural industry are estimated to be between $240 million and $266 million By Environmental News Network staff
The government is not wasting taxpayer money when it comes to research on the El Niño weather phenomenon, according to a cost benefit analysis conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study found that the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere (TOGA) climate research program provides an economic return on investment to the United States of at least 13 percent to 26 percent annually. NOAA officials say that this is a conservative range, because the study only includes benefits to the U.S. agricultural industry.
The government's minimally acceptable rate of return on an investment is 7 percent -- based on the marginal pre-tax rate of return of an average recent investment in the private sector.
NOAA conducted the study to determine if its climate research is a significantly beneficial investment and worthy of continued support, says NOAA chief economist Dr. Rodney Weiher.
TOGA was a successful 10-year scientific effort to understand and model the El Niño/Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon. It involved, among other things, deployment of an array of ocean-observing buoys. Now, climate models can predict El Niño events, such as the current one, a year or so in advance.
El Niño is the abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean and affects global weather patterns. One major impact is increased rainfall across California and the southern United States.
"We concluded that the TOGA program was a sound use of public resources, and that additional funding of climate forecasting (research and development) efforts -- at both the national and international levels -- merits serious consideration," the researchers say in their just-published paper in the book "Operational Oceanography: The Challenge for European Cooperation."
The study focused on the benefits of TOGA to the U.S. agricultural sector because it is probably more affected by weather than other sectors, said Dr. Peter Sassone, an associate professor of economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Annual TOGA benefits to the agricultural industry are estimated to be between $240 million and $266 million, the researchers say.
In essence, this analysis says, "If farmers learned what the El Niño forecast was and abided by it over the course of a decade or so, and made whatever adjustments they could, on average they would be better off than if they didn't," Sassone said. Such adjustments include planting earlier or later, using a different variety of seed or altering the mix of crops planted.
"Farming has become a high-tech industry," said Sassone. "Farmers are continually incorporating new technology, such as better fertilizer, seeds and pesticides. ... While El Niño forecasts are a somewhat different kind of 'technology' than farmers are accustomed to, we assumed here that the adoption and use of such forecasts by mainstream agriculture will not be remarkably different from farmers' adoption of other new technologies."
Copyright 1998, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved
Related ENN sites:
The Forecast | Prediction Meter | Ground Zero
The Wet Coast | Strange Brew | The Trackers
|
Sound off on our message boards & chat |
|
