WINNIPEG – A group of North American climate experts says the weather forecast calls for … uncertainty.
About 30 meterologists, forecasters and scientists met here last week to talk about long-range forecasts. But when it came down to putting models, research and theories together to predict what the 1995 growing season will be like, few were willing to place bets.
“My opinion is we don’t have enough skill to forecast what this summer is going to be like,” said Brian Fehr of Environment Canada’s Winnipeg Climate Centre.
Paul Bullock said he’s just as uncertain about this season as he was before the conference began.
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“We have gut-feels and things like that, but we really don’t have a good objective reliable way of dealing with (seasonal forecasts),” said Bullock, director of the Canadian Wheat Board’s weather and crop surveillance department, which hosted the conference. Bullock added he does not read the Farmers’ Almanac.
The importance of the conference lay in learning how other people make their forecasts, Bullock said. “Hopefully we’ll learn a little bit from having put our heads together here, even though we don’t all have the same opinion when we leave.”
But forecasters did agree that El Nino trade winds are petering out. Some believe that El Nino has caused warmer-than-usual temperatures for the past two growing seasons.
However, there was no consensus on how soon it will die and what will happen next. Some of the forecasters said they think farmers will enjoy another good growing season this year.
Southern Alberta and southwest Saskatchewan will continue to have dry conditions, while the eastern Prairies will enjoy good moisture. Several believe the whole prairie region will be affected by dry conditions after El Nino dies.
Bullock said the problem with seasonal forecasts comes in the “swing” seasons of fall and spring. “That’s when your relationships seem to break down,” he said.
But Bullock said he learned from other experts not to put too much stock in “glamorous” elements of long-range forecasting like El Nino.
“I’ve kind of always had the feeling that it’s a little bit risky trying to base too much just on one phenomenon,” Bullock said. “There’s a wider range of inputs that we need to be looking at if we’re going to be successful in achieving, shall we say, a little more reliability in a seasonal forecast.”
