Planning for La Niña and El Niño is wise, considering its potential extreme weather effects. Here’s help.
“The triple-dip La Niña of 2023 will be the first this century, and its impacts will be more severe and complex than ever before,” says Dr. Anand Swaroop, president and founder of Cepham, Inc., the Somerset, N.J.-based natural products company.
This La Niña event will affect weather patterns around the world for at least six months this year.
Cepham monitors local and global weather to anticipate changes in the supply of raw materials. Swaroop is sharing his weather forecasting business model via his newsletter, Cepham Sense at https://cepham.com/cepham-sense, to help companies make decisions that impact the environment and supply chain. His company uses the model to alert customers of potential delivery delays and supply chain disruptions, set accurate prices, and protect employees from hazardous working conditions. He believes that long-term weather forecasting should be an essential part of any company’s business model, and sharing information is good for all.
“Triple-dip” simply means that La Niña is in its third consecutive year. La Niña occurs when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean fall below average for seven consecutive months or more. Among other effects, this results in a shift in the jet stream as well as more nutrients in the ocean, attracting more marine life to the California coast.
Scientists predict that this La Niña event will affect weather patterns around the world for at least six months this year. It is known to cause increased rainfall, flooding, heatwaves, droughts, and other climatic issues across different parts of the world. (La Niñas are usually preceded by El Niños, which warm the surface of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean; however, an El Niño event did not occur before the current La Niña. We can expect El Niño to follow La Niña after a transition period.)
This year, due to its shifting weather patterns, La Niña is expected to have a significant impact on China, the coffee crop in Brazil and Vietnam, and the Indian monsoon, which accounts for about 70% of India’s annual rainfall and affects rice, wheat, sugar cane, and oilseed yields such as soybeans. n
—Warren Thayer
