No more El Niño?

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MANILA – As the anticipated signs of the El Niño phenomenon have failed to materialize, an inter-agency body administered by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that the phenomenon has lesser chances of coming.

“The El Niño event that has been anticipated since April has not materialized,” latest Market Monitor report from the Agricultural Market Information System (Amis) indicated.

They noted the shift in the focus of the climate watchers to the southern hemisphere.

They also added that the Pacific’s sea surface temperature failed to reach the criteria for El Niño despite the fact that they were warmer than the average.

Amis cited the mid- and late-October projections referred to by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which indicated the probability of an El Niño event at above 50 percent at the 2014-2015 southern hemisphere growing season.

It added, however that the possibility is not expected to be a strong event.

Meanwhile, conditions for global rice production were “generally favorable,” according to Amis.

A global forecast however recorded hat the output for the mid-2014 to mid-2015 will be decreased by two million tons compared to the previous period’s output at 496 million tons.