But the developing El Niño is predicted to be less severe than the one that hit in 1997-98, causing a six-month period with almost no rain that prompted a U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency-supported disaster response for water-starved islands.
Rainfall is critical in these low-lying coral islands that depend on rain for about 90 percent of their fresh water, getting the balance from brackish ground wells.
Dr. Mark Lander, a meteorologist with the University of Guam’s Water and Environmental Research Institute that is affiliated with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, explained how the Pacific swings between the El Niño and La Niña weather phenomena. These two weather conditions are at opposite ends of the spectrum: El Niño brings warmer seawater and westerly winds, causing drought and increasing the chances of typhoons in the Marshall Islands area. La Niña is the opposite, cooling ocean water and bringing heavier rainfall. There can be as much as a 10-degree to 12-degree (Fahrenheit) shift in ocean temperatures at opposite ends of this El Niño-La Niña weather phenomenon, Lander said.
“El Niño takes about one year (to complete its cycle),” Lander said. “If this one is as usual, it will be over in the spring of 2010. It will stay at least three-to-six months.”
While in 1998, the first six months of the year produced only 20 percent of normal rainfall, Lander is predicting a much milder impact of this El Niño on rain in Majuro and other islands in the country.
Through December, the southern islands of Ebon, Namdrik and Kili should receive about 90 percent of their usual rain levels, Majuro and central islands should get about 85 percent, and the northern islands should get about 80 percent.
This will drop to 60-85 percent of expected rainfall from January to June 2010, according to Lander’s predictions. But then as the weather pendulum swings back toward La Niña, more rain is expected from July next year and onward, with a return to near normal patterns.
