Mainstreaming the Full ENSO: Linking Present Weather and Future Climate

In this article we propose that all countries that are striving to become a Weather-Ready Nation (WRN) would benefit greatly from including El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-related research findings into their decision-making processes, not only when an El Niño or a La Niña forecast has been issued quasi-periodically. For an aspiring WRN, to benefit from ENSO information, such as disruptive or beneficial changes that could be foreseeably expected to occur in seasonal flow and in sub-seasonal hydrometeorological anomalies, requires its continuous mainstreaming about the status of the ENSO process into a WRN’s decision-making activities. The ENSO process provides a bridge between sub-seasonal weather anomalies and a sub-decadal climate phenomenon as well as a bridge between coping with weather extremes today and preparing for climate change-related hydrometeorological hazards in the future. ENSO extremes every few years provide a chance to evaluate a nation’s strategic and tactical responses to hydrometeorological hazard forecasts and disasters. Each successive ENSO extreme and its Neutral phase tests previously designed best practices. Involvement of today’s youth and young professionals on climate, water, and weather issues has been increasing and will do so in coming decades. Shifting awareness and attention to ENSO and away from ENSO extremes is crucial. The heightened urgency for understanding the full ENSO “cycle” especially by youth and young professionals today is because they will soon be in professional positions that enable them to advise decision makers about climate policy issues. Their understanding of the ENSO cycle is critically needed, as global warming is expected to continue to increase for the rest of the twenty-first century.