AgWeb posted an article this morning quoting a market watcher (whose name I won’t give because I don’t want to give him free advertising) saying that he wouldn’t be surprised if NOAA was putting out a La Niña watch to boost crop prices before the election. This shows a real misunderstanding of how NOAA employees prepare their analyses and how the climate works. I have many friends who are NOAA employees and have worked for the National Weather Service myself in the past, and I know how dedicated they are to providing the best and most accurate information possible regardless of their personal politics (which vary quite a bit).
Climate outlooks are always being updated to include the latest observations of atmospheric and oceanic conditions, and as these change, so do the outlooks. When you look at the latest observations, it is clear why a La Niña watch was issued again after NOAA removed it last month. Conditions along the equator were looking less favorable for the development of La Niña last month and the forecasts based on that information gave it only a 40 percent chance of occurrence, which is below the threshold for a La Niña watch. But cooling in the eastern Pacific Ocean has increased quite a bit since then, bumping up the chances of a La Niña to 70 percent, which is well over the threshold for a watch.
I’ve seen similar comments about warnings for storm damage from Hurricane Matthew and how some folks thought that the government was hyping the storm’s impacts to (somehow) push their extreme weather and global warming agenda. Again, this shows a misunderstanding of how NOAA provides warnings, preparing people for the worst case so they can make appropriate choices of how to protect themselves and their families and property. MySA from San Antonio has a good discussion of this written by David Titley of Penn State University here.
I realize that not everyone thinks highly of the federal government, but in my experience NOAA employees are trying hard to get the science right and provide the best, clearest, and most timely and accurate information on weather and climate out there, 24/7/365, often at significant personal cost to themselves when they have to work through extreme weather situations while their families are threatened at home. I hope you will join me in saluting them for their tireless work in keeping all of us safe and well-informed.
