“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato (c. 380 BC)
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has assigned an 80% chance of a strong El Niño event commencing in the late summer with a 96% chance that the El Niño will continue into early 2027. El Niños (warming phase) and La Niñas (cooling phase) are natural cycles that alternate roughly every 3-7 years. What makes this one special is the abnormally intense heating of the Pacific equatorial region.
A strong El Niño can disrupt weather patterns worldwide. Typically, the greatest effects are felt in equatorial nations in Central and South America, Africa, and Australia. The southern US states typically are wetter while the Northwest and Ohio Valley are drier and warmer. For the Rockies, that store snowpack and feed the major rivers in the country, it has always been a crapshoot. Sometimes the effects go just south of the state, other years the state is hit. The El Niño of 1982-1983 brought the “blizzard years” to Colorado in the winter of 1983-1984, leaving the state with record snowfall…over 400 inches in many places.
While such a winter is welcome to skiers, it can be deadly and costly to most locales and El Niño’s flipside, extreme drought in areas and record flooding in others, complicates an already stressed ecosystem. These effects translate to crop disruptions, heat stress, famine, and impacts on commodity costs that are already elevated due to Middle East energy disruption. The effects can be felt across the spectrum from commodity costs to insurance premiums.
Advance warning and prediction are a fundamental tool for preparedness and resiliency.
In the Atlantic, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC) is slowing. This is the ocean’s massive conveyor belt that brings warm salty water from the equator north to Iceland and Europe where it cools, sinks, and returns. It regulates weather, distributes nutrients for marine stocks, and absorbs carbon. Without the AMOC, scientists predict areas of Canada, North America and Europe could have temperatures fall as much as 18-50F degrees. A catastrophic potential, however small.
Seventy percent of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans. The oceans’ actions and interactions are directly related to weather, climate, coastal zone flooding, extreme weather such as typhoons and hurricanes, and impacts to water and sewer infrastructure (40% of the US population lives in the coastal zone). Having data, science, on what the ocean is doing is fundamental to anticipating, preventing, and coping with the effects of nature on our lives.
In the midst of needing to know more, not less, blindness sets in. The administration announced its intent to dismantle a critical deep ocean buoy monitoring network composed of 900 buoys that are a part of the Ocean Observatories Initiative that began full operations in 2016. The system cost over $370 million to install and was to have a lifespan of thirty years. The annual operation cost of the system is only $48 million. The cost to dismantle the relatively new system? More than its original $370 million cost.
The WMO and NOAA admit that removal of the buoys will reduce the accuracy of weather forecasting and drought preparedness.
Why, when the economics do not support any savings? Logic doesn’t play into the equation. It is cultural. To have data that might frame an issue one disagrees with is not a good reason to eliminate the data. America has always been a country of science, technology and an attitude that it can be better through education and solving the hard problems. Bright minds are to be celebrated not deterred. If we don’t, we risk fulfilling Bejamin Franklin’s famous saying: “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.“