MALNUTRITION: East Africa: Fears of a new drought as La Niña returns

JOHANNESBURG, 10 February 2012 (IRIN)

 Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN
Families queue for food at a feeding point in Mogadishu last year

The climatic conditions linked to the drought in the Horn in 2011 have persisted, and some early warning officials say the aid community should brace themselves for a possible re-run of last year's food crisis.
However, in their forecast, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says they expect the impact of the La Niña to wane over March to May 2012, which is the major rainfall period for pastoral and agricultural areas of northern Kenya, southern Ethiopia, and most of Somalia, accounting for 50-60 percent of annual rainfall.
“That is the official line, but the latest modeling suggests that the [La Niña ] conditions seem quite similar to 2011,” said an early warning official. “The message out there is to be prepared to respond before it is too late.”
La Niña occurs when the surface of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean - the world’s largest body of water – cools, and has a climatic impact in other regions of the world.
According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) , “the western Pacific is currently exhibiting a sea surface temperature and rainfall pattern which is similar to patterns experienced during the drought years of 1984, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011. This analysis suggests that if these conditions persist, eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and southeastern Ethiopia may experience dry conditions.”
But the current La Niña is “relatively weaker” than the one recorded in 2011, said Rupa Kumar Kolli, chief of the World Climate Applications and Services Division at WMO.
He noted that the WMO forecast was a global outlook, and various local factors would come into play when looking at the event’s impact regionally. “For instance conditions [temperature and rainfall patterns] in the Indian Ocean would be a factor that would influence rainfall patterns in the Horn.”
The Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum, which monitors such local conditions, is meeting from 27 to 29 February in Rwanda and will provide greater forecast clarity, said both Kolli and FEWS NET.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=94842

MALNUTRITION: ETHIOPIA: Somalis living from drought to drought

BISLE (SOMALI REGION), 12 July 2011 (IRIN)
 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Shokuri Abdullai, like most mothers in Bisle, feeds her family boiled wheat in the Somali region's Shinile zone

Every day, 500g of boiled wheat is divided up between two adults, four children, a calf, a goat and a donkey in the Farah household. It is the only food they have had after rains failed for the past two seasons.
The 15kg sack of wheat is provided to about 1,200 people in the Bisle area, which has four settlements, under the government-run Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) as payment for work, such as digging water holes.
"It is boiled wheat for breakfast and for the main meal – we don't have anything else – no milk, no meat, no vegetables, no oil," says Maria Farah, the mother. Not surprisingly, two of her children are severely malnourished.
The calf and goat that share their "ari" - a collapsible egg-shaped hut made of sticks and covered with sheeting – are emaciated. It is too hot for them outside, in temperatures that soar beyond 40 degrees Celsius.
There is no water in their settlement, about 54km north of Dire Dawa town in the Somali region, one of the worst hit by drought in Ethiopia. More than a million people have been affected.
On 11 July, the Ethiopian government launched an appeal for US $398 million to help 4.5 million people, up from 3.2 million in March, who are in need of food aid due to the drought.
Launching the July-December 2011 Humanitarian Requirements Document in the capital, Addis Ababa, Agriculture Minister Ato Mitiku Kassa said of the total revised 4.5 million beneficiaries, 41 and 32 percent are in Oromiya and Somali regional states respectively.
For Farah's family in Bisle, the worsening drought continues to threaten their livelihood. Their donkey, tied to a post, used to help carry water from the nearest waterhole about four hours. But he is frail. "He is too sick to move now," Farah said.
These pastoralists have lost scores of animals in the past three months.
"What will you do – you are just taking notes, are you going to help us?" asks Ali Abdi, a 60-year-old pastoralist. This is the worst drought he has seen in his lifetime, he adds.
An unrelenting battle with failed rains over eight years has left them with no sense of a future nor any hope of a better life.
The eastern Somali region depends on two rainy seasons, known as the gu (April-May) and the deyr (October-November). The gu rains provide 60 percent of the water needs for the region, and the deyr 30 percent.
Both rains failed in 2010 because of a particularly strong La Niña. Some parts of the region received rainfall in May but not enough to replenish reservoirs. Bisle received none at all.
Shokuri Abdullai, a mother of six, sends two of her children to school, which is free in Ethiopia. But she has not given much thought to what will become of them. They moved to this settlement from their village about eight years ago when they lost all their animals to drought.
The settlement is among the most accessible in the harsh Somali region during the dry season. "So NGOs drop by with some food now and then and there is a health post," said Abdullai, explaining their choice to make their home in Bisle, which has only become drier.
Maria Guled, a mother of five, the eldest 11, lies awake at night worrying about them. "I don’t have any other family anywhere else to send them to." Her children are unable to go to school because "they are too hungry".
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is supporting Save the Children-UK in running a new community-based therapeutic programme at the health post in the settlement. Thanks to the ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), Farah's children have some additional rations.
"But all the food we provide for the malnourished children - a bottle of oil and 25kg of corn soya blend - is consumed by the entire family so the child still remains malnourished," a community health worker said.
There are others who are even less fortunate than the residents of the settlement. A woman with a severely malnourished child at the health post said she had walked two nights from her village for help. She left 10 of her children – the eldest a 15-year-old - alone at home. “I have no choice – my husband left for Djibouti two years ago because of the drought to look for work.” She is too distraught and angry and refuses to be photographed. "What will you do with all this? Are you going to help me?”
But the feeding programme is only three months old, with funding for another three. "It is not a sustainable solution – we need to address the causes,” Katy Webley, director of programmes at Save the Children-UK, said.
Daniel Maxwell, a food security expert and former aid worker in the Horn, said in an email that "underlying livelihoods crisis and threats to food security have to be dealt with in a much more systematic manner, including social protection programmes for the most vulnerable groups even in years when there is not a major humanitarian crisis, and greater emphasis on resilience and reduction of risk”.
He cited Ethiopia’s unique PSNP as the best example of an ideal social programme.

How PSNP works
The PSNP targets people facing predictable food insecurity and offers guaranteed employment for five days a month in return for transfers of either food or cash.
The PSNP has two–pronged benefits in a harsh arid zone such as Somali: cash or food builds resilience; while projects such as reforestation to stem land degradation and water harvesting would help the land recover in the long term.
"But in these conditions [cycles of drought] – there is not much we can do – there has been no room for recovery,” says Abdi Farah, manager of the PSNP in the Shinile woreda [district], where Bisle is located. “The PSNP has become a food aid operation; we need to get to at least 10,000 people in Bisle alone but we don’t have the resources.”
Shahid Haji, of the World Food Programme (WFP), which supports the PSNP with food, said: "We are stuck in the emergency mode – people need aid. They have not had the chance to build any resilience."



 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Maria Farah outside her ari

Farah Wayis Ali, an elder from the settlement, explained to Valerie Amos, the visiting UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, that they could not work in the PSNP programmes as they needed water. “To collect the water we have to walk four hours – so when do we do the work?”
The government recently started trucking in water. “It is not a lot – we have big fights over water,” says Ali Abdi.
But supplying water is an extremely expensive exercise. Amy Martin, acting head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Ethiopia, said the operation to supply water in the drought-affected parts of Ethiopia from January to March alone had cost at least US$11 million.
Amos said the government was exploring the option of tapping deeper into the water table for a sustainable supply, but this too was costly.
The PSNP also has the option of providing cash but high food prices have rendered the exercise meaningless. Ali Abdi said a 50kg bag of wheat cost 400 birr (almost $24) compared with 150 birr (about $9) for a goat. “The life of our livestock has become so cheap.”
Maxwell said it should be noted “that much of this activity [PSNP] is still donor-supported [and hence subject to the same budget-cutting]”.

Security concerns
Humanitarian access has also been restricted in parts of the Somali region. In June 2011, two WFP workers were detained in the region.
Shadrack Omol, UNICEF's chief of operations and emergency in Ethiopia, said because of “conflict and security issues a number of health posts are frequently not able to provide essential services, [let] alone nutrition programmes”. As a solution, the agency is deploying mobile health and nutrition teams.
Amos said she had met Ethiopia's deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn to discuss a plan to ensure safe access for aid workers to the country’s volatile areas.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93200

MALNUTRITION: Horn of Africa: La Niña blamed for east African drought

Thursday 14 July 2011La Niña blamed for east African drought
Environmentalists call for the development of early warning systems to help countries prepare for adverse weather

 
Carcasses of cattle lie on the ground near Lagbogal, Kenya, earlier this week. Scientists are blaming La Niña for the drought, which is the worst seen in the Horn of Africa for more than 60 years. Photograph: Sayyid Azim/AP

As parts of the Horn of Africa experience their driest periods in 60 years, pushing the numbers needing aid to beyond 10 million, some have been quick to blame climate change.
But no single event can be attributed to climate change, which involves long-term (decades or longer) trends in climate variability. There is, however, consensus in attributing the drought to the particularly strong La Niña event. The impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of La Niña and El Niño in future is unknown.
IRIN spoke to two experts, an environmentalist and a scientist, who have worked extensively in the region.
Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.
He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate change impact in east Africa were "a problem" as the authoritative inter-governmental panel on climate change's (the IPCC) fourth assessment report "indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.
"But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that ... certain Indian Ocean effects in east Africa may not actually occur.
"Some people think that east Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time."
The IPCC's fifth assessment report will be released in 2014.
Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI's people, livestock and environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that "we don't understand".
What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. "The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from east Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of east Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia," according to the US government's National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
De Leeuw writes: "La Niña events were common from 1950 till 1976. Since then we had two decades [until about 1996] with fewer events of lesser depth. This has changed since then and over the last 15 years or so we have had more frequent La Niña events."
Events as deep as the current La Niña occur once in 20 or 30 years, writes De Leeuw. "We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also."
Thornton has the last word when he says research attention must focus on developing effective early warning systems and ways to help people affected by these events, who have no use for "academic" consideration of the linkages with climate change to cope better with the current levels of weather variability, "whatever happens in the future".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jul/14/east-africa-drought-la-nina

MALNUTRITION: EASTERN AFRICA: Too soon to blame climate change for drought

ADDIS ABABA, 12 July 2011 (IRIN)

 Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN
Ali Abdi, 60, a pastoralist in Bisle, Shinile zone of Ethiopia's Somali region, says it is the worst drought he has seen in his lifetime

As parts of the Horn of Africa experience their driest periods in 60 years, pushing the numbers needing aid to beyond 10 million, some have been quick to blame climate change.
But no single event can be attributed to climate change, which involves long-term (decades or longer) trends in climate variability. There is, however, consensus in attributing the drought to the particularly strong La Niña event. The impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of La Niña and El Niño in future is a big unknown.
IRIN spoke to two experts, an environmentalist and a scientist, who have worked extensively in the region:
Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, has done some pioneering work on projections of climate-change impact in eastern and southern Africa.
He told IRIN via email that projections of the climate-change impact in East Africa were “a problem” as the authoritative Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report “indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century.
"But work by other climate scientists since then suggests that ... certain Indian Ocean effects in East Africa may not actually occur.
"Some people think that East Africa is drying, and has dried over recent years; currently there is no hard, general evidence of this, and it is very difficult as yet to see where the statistical trends of rainfall in the region are heading, but these will of course become apparent in time.” [see Unpacking La Niña]
The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report will be released in 2014.
 Photo: ILRI
Rainfall in East Africa related to El Niño Southern Oscillation points to severe La Niña phase

Jan de Leeuw is the operating project leader in the vulnerability and sustainability in pastoral and agro-pastoral systems within ILRI’s People, Livestock and Environment theme. He points out that this La Niña event is one of the strongest since the 1970s. But he says La Niña, along with El Niño, appear in cycles that “we don’t understand”.
What we do know is that La Niña started to develop in August 2010. It cools surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, while allowing warmer water to build in the eastern Pacific. “The pool of warm water in the east intensifies rains in Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Domino-style, this pattern also increases the intensity of westerly winds over the Indian Ocean, pulling moisture away from East Africa toward Indonesia and Australia. The result? Drought over most of East Africa and floods and lush vegetation in Australia and other parts of Southeast Asia,” according to the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
De Leeuw writes: “La Niña events were common from 1950 till 1976. Since then we had two decades [until about 1996] with fewer events of lesser depth. This has changed since then and over the last 15 years or so we have had more frequent La Niña events.”
Events as deep as the current La Niña occur once in 20 or 30 years, writes De Leeuw. “We are in a period now of more frequent La Niña events, but such a situation was there from 1950 till 1976 also.”
Thornton has the last word when he says research attention must focus on developing effective early warning systems and ways to help people affected by these events, who have no use for “academic” consideration of the linkages with climate change to cope better with the current levels of weather variability, “whatever happens in the future”.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93204

POVERTY: UGANDA: Food, water crisis looms for thousands

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
A boy quenches his thirst at a mobile water point in northern Uganda. Forecasts by the meteorological department indicate that the country is headed for a long period of drought

AGAGO/AMURU, 9 March 2011 (IRIN) - Thousands of people in 36 of Uganda's 112 districts are at risk of serious food and water shortages due to drought attributed to the La Niña weather phenomenon.
Health officials have warned of outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhoea and dysentery, due to poor hygiene.
The situation requires urgent attention, says the Minister for Disaster Preparedness, Musa Ecweru. "We are experiencing food shortages; some families are [already] going without food."
The ministry has issued public alerts, warning of impending severe water shortages and famine in parts of the country.
Ecweru said the government was working out ways of securing money for relief food and identifying the worst-hit families.
Forecasts by the meteorological department indicate that the country is headed for a long period of drought. The department has predicted that La Niña conditions, which started in July 2010, will affect rainfall distribution in 2011.
James Magezi, a senior research officer at the meteorological department and assistant commissioner in the Ministry of Water and Environment, told IRIN several parts of the country were likely to experience abnormal rainfall patterns this year, with regions such as northern Uganda and Karamoja completely dry.
Magezi said sunny and dry conditions, characterized by higher-than-normal daytime temperatures, would occur across the country and were likely to continue up to mid-2011.

Poor rainfall
Although some rains are expected in March, Magezi said they were likely to be insufficient to support agriculture in many areas. Wells are already drying up in some of the 36 affected districts, forcing residents to walk long distances in search of water.
Richard Ongom, a resident of Lira Palwo in Agago district, told IRIN: "It takes several hours for the wells to fill up and we have to walk long distances to fetch water from rivers and streams."
He added that high daytime temperatures and strong winds made movement difficult. "The sun is too hot during the day and the blowing winds crack our lips; at night it is impossible to sleep inside the house because of the heat."
The drought-prone Karamoja region, in the northeast, is one of the areas hardest-hit by the La Niña effect, with households struggling to sustain livelihoods. Strong winds are destroying structures and movement is hampered by temperatures ranging from 35 to 38 degrees Celsius during the day.

 Photo: Charles Akena/IRIN
A dried up stream in Lamwo, northern Uganda

In the north, formerly displaced persons resettling in villages in the Acholi districts are experiencing frequent fire outbreaks and falling water levels in rivers.
Oxfam, an international NGO, warned of impending drought in East Africa as well as the Horn of Africa in an update for March, stating that the situation was "deteriorating quickly and could result in a major humanitarian emergency over the coming months".

Response
While noting that governments in the region had recognized the severity of the crisis and initiated remedial measures, Oxfam cautioned that "responses have generally come later than necessary and are focused on emergency measures such as trucking in water and de-stocking animals - buying up cattle that are too weak or low value".
The drought has also affected electricity generation in Uganda as water levels fall in rivers such as the Nile. Streams such as the Aswa, Ayugi, Unyama and Pager, all in Amuru and Kitgum districts, are drying up.
Pastoralists living along the cattle corridors in Nakasongola district and Bullisa, in Bunyoro region, have expressed concern over loss of livelihoods due to the shortage of pasture and water for their livestock.

Food security
Parts of the country were hit by torrential rains in 2010, causing water-logging and rotting of crops, a situation that has now affected food reserves.
"Where shall we get food; last year's harvest was very poor and the little we had we sold to raise money for family needs such as school fees and treatment?" asked James Onyut, a resident of Agago.
Unless the government intervenes, Onyut said, people were going to face tough times. "We pray the rains come early and remain normal so that we can harvest something good from the first season of March-July," Onyut said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=92146

POVERTY: EAST AFRICA: La Niña-induced drought “to affect millions”

 Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN
The the La Niña phenomenon is keeping East Africa drier than usual and has sparked food-security concerns in areas lacking irrigation, including parts of Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania

NAIROBI, 18 February 2011 (IRIN) - Since November, East African countries have registered serious drought conditions that are likely to worsen in coming months. According to data recently released by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the La Niña weather effect is largely responsible.
WMO said the phenomenon might last up to four more months and emphasized that it was already possible to notice “some very dry parts of eastern Africa” amid harsher weather conditions than normal for this time of year.
La Niña is the name given to the cooling of the surface of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs every two to five years. It keeps East Africa drier than usual and sparks food-security concerns in areas lacking irrigation, including parts of Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
Kenya and Somalia are among the countries already affected. “Some areas in the North are a disaster right now,” said Mohamoud Duale, director of the NGO Rural Agency for Community Development and Assistance (RACIDA). In northern Isiolo, Marsabit, Moyale and Samburu districts, at least 150,000 people urgently need food aid, most of them women, children and the elderly.
Duale was in Nairobi for the media briefing, Drought in Kenya: When will it ever end?, sponsored by Oxfam, Cordaid, Care International, Save the Children, VSF-Belgium and Reconcile.
The assistant minister in the Kenyan Ministry of State for Special Programmes, Mahmoud Ali, was also at the event and stressed that the government was providing food assistance to one million Kenyans while the World Food Programme (WFP) was distributing food to another 1.6 million people.
“The total population affected by the La Niña phenomenon is about five million people, hence the need to provide food to an additional 2.4 million persons,” he added. Ali also pointed out that to minimize the drought effects the government had reallocated KSh9.5 billion (US$118 million) to the affected areas, mainly in northern Kenya.

 Photo: Anthony Morland/IRIN
Officials says at least 150,000 drought-affected people urgently need food aid in Isiolo, Marsabit, Moyale and Samburu districts in northern Kenya

Among the new measures are 57 trucks to assist in the delivery of relief commodities to affected areas, livestock vaccinations, construction of scale pans and dams and distribution of aqua tabs to purify water.

Emergency aid
But, on the ground, people are dealing every day with the drought effects without much change to their situation. “Two deaths from starvation were registered in the North of Kenya recently. People are migrating to Ethiopia or Uganda to survive. It is already a crisis,” said Duale.
Despite being considered one of Africa's leading agricultural nations, drought is not new to Kenya. A drought from 2007 to 2009 led to a spike in food prices and threatened the economy.
In Somalia, water resources and pasture conditions have deteriorated further, triggering more livestock migration and increasing competition among pastoralists. “River levels are currently below-normal for this time of the year and are expected to further decrease until the next rainy season in April,” according to the Somalia Drought Watch Bulletin January 2011, published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
An estimated 2.4 million Somalis require emergency humanitarian assistance because of civil unrest and food insecurity, according to the UN. Another drought is also likely to increase the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs); Somalia already has an estimated 1.4 million IDPs.
“We have to act first, instead of reacting. There will be more droughts in the future, but they do not have to bring disaster. We need to tackle drought before it starts, not wait until it is too late and people are already suffering,” said Safia Abdi, programme officer at Cordaid.
In Ethiopia, the National Meteorology Agency reported that a “moderate to strong” La Niña phenomenon was likely to continue, potentially until June, resulting in below-normal rains in many areas, except in the west and southwest, where they are expected to be normal.
Tanzania, the second-largest economy in East Africa, is also starting to feel the effects. This week, the government extended nationwide power rationing. The Energy and Minerals Minister William Ngeleja told parliament that rationing was expected to end in January, but falling water levels at hydropower stations had increased the power deficit. Most of Tanzania’s electricity is hydropower-generated. Some lawmakers considered the shortfall a “national crisis”.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=91966

POVERTY: Explaining La Niña

  Photo: Contributor/IRIN: Heavy rains in the Philippines have been linked to the La Niña

JOHANNESBURG, 27 January 2011 (IRIN) - As floods driven by heavy downpours in South Africa, Australia and Sri Lanka swallowed vast tracts of land in the past few weeks, almost every news report blamed La Niña - described as "the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon" by the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
IRIN takes a look at La Niña, what it is, how it affects weather across the world, and whether it can be linked to the current extreme weather events.
What is La Niña?
It is the name given to the cooling of the surface of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that occurs every two to five years, first observed by the coastal residents of Peru.
“In the first months of each year, a warm southward current usually modified the cool waters [of the eastern Pacific Ocean],” noted science writer Bob Henson and scientist Kevin Trenberth of the US-based University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
The residents also noticed that every few years the warming started early in December, it was stronger, and lasted as long as a year or two. They called it El Niño, “The Christ Child”.
Then the waters would turn cooler again, and this phenomenon was dubbed “La Niña” or “The Girl Child”.
Researchers later discovered that the phenomenon took place on a much bigger scale, affecting most of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The Pacific is the largest body of water on earth and has a tremendous influence on the global climate.
The impact of El Niño-La Niña on the atmosphere was only realized gradually as bits and pieces of the effect of the interaction between the ocean and the air on the earth’s rainfall patterns and weather began to be discovered.
It began with the work of two scientists studying the collapse of the monsoon rains in India, followed by a drought, in the early 1900s.
Sir Gilbert Walker found a seesaw variation in pressure between the eastern and western Pacific Ocean, said the Earth Observatory, the public arm of NASA.
“Walker found that when air pressure was high at Darwin, Australia, (western Pacific) it was low at Tahiti (eastern Pacific), and when air pressure was low at Darwin, it was high at Tahiti.” He called this pressure seesaw the Southern Oscillation (SO).
In the 1960s, Jacob Bjerknes, a Norwegian meteorologist, recognized that the pressure variations affected rainfall patterns and the weather. He reasoned that the difference in pressure pushed winds westwards, carrying moisture from the ocean and dumping heavy monsoon rains in Indonesia. He named this phenomenon the Walker circulation, after Sir Gilbert.
Bjerknes observed that during El Niño conditions, when the waters off northern Peru were warmer, the surface air pressure was lower as a result. The pressure difference between east and west weakened, and so did the westward trade winds, the US National Academy of Sciences notes on its website.
"As the winds falter, warm moist air rises over the central Pacific instead of farther west, effectively stealing the monsoon rains from India and Indonesia and spawning rainstorms that strike the west coasts of North and South America."
During the La Niña period, the reverse happens - the trade winds become stronger, bringing more rain to Asia.
Collectively the phases of the air-sea interaction in the region are referred to as the "El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO)".

What impact does it have globally?
La Niña and El Niño are still being studied, but scientists have managed to map the weather patterns observed during each episode.
However, neither phenomenon can be said to have caused an individual extreme weather event. One has to consider the influence of other factors, such as local weather anomalies in the atmosphere or sea conditions at the time.
But, generally, during La Niña episodes rainfall increases across the western equatorial Pacific region, which covers northern Australia and Indonesia, from December to February, and the Philippines from June to August, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). South Asia and southeastern Australia also receive above-normal rainfall.
On the other hand, rain is nearly absent in the eastern equatorial Pacific region. From June to August, southern Brazil and central Argentina experience drier conditions, and between December and February, so do coastal Ecuador and northwestern Peru.
Equatorial eastern Africa also usually records drier than normal conditions in the December-February period.
Northern South America and Southern Africa, however, tend to have wetter than normal seasons between December and February.
Over the years, scientists have also discovered that La Niña episodes feed into large-scale temperature deviations from the norm throughout the world, with most of the affected regions experiencing unusually cool conditions.
Below-normal temperatures from December to February have been recorded over southeastern Africa, Japan, southern Alaska, western and central Canada, and southeastern Brazil, while the Gulf Coast of the United States has warmed up.
In the tropical north Atlantic a more active hurricane season was recorded from June to November.
India and southeastern Asia experienced cooler summers in the June-August period. The west coast of South America, the Gulf of Guinea region in West Africa, northern South America and portions of Central America also become cooler.

Can current extreme weather events be linked to La Niña?
2010 has been Australia’s wettest year since 2000, and the third wettest on record, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which has linked the recent spate of heavy rains to La Niña. The government said the cost of recovery from the resulting floods would run into billions.
The heavy rains in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand were also typical of La Niña, the WMO noted in a brief prepared in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University in the US.
There was no clear link between La Niña and the recent heavy rains in Sri Lanka, where parts of the country received record rainfall, causing floods and landslides which affected more than 835,575 people, according to the government's Disaster Management Centre.
The UK Met Office, casting some doubt on the link between La Niña and the heavy rainfall in Sri Lanka, noted in a statement that the "current La Niña extends further west than usual, and this is associated with a westward shift in rainfall patterns in the region. Sri Lanka is on the very western edge of this rain."
The La Niña phenomenon is associated with rainfall deficiency in equatorial eastern Africa, and the "current drought in Somalia and northern Kenya is believed to be due to La Niña influence," said the WMO.
In South Africa, floods, lightning and storms, accompanied by heavy downpours in the past few weeks have claimed 41 lives and affected thousands across 33 municipalities. Cobus Oliver, a scientist at the South African Weather Service, said the heavier than usual torrents of rain were "mostly because of the La Niña". He expected the impact to be felt for another six months locally.
WMO projected that the global impact of La Niña would linger into the second quarter of 2011, until April or early May, but the strength of the event was likely to wane over the next four months.
Is this the strongest La Niña?
The strength of a La Niña occurrence is measured by a WMO consensus index - a three-month average of departures from the norm in sea-surface temperatures in an area identified with ENSO. According to WMO, the current La Niña is one of the strongest recorded in the past century.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology noted that the current episode was exceeded by the La Niña of 1917-18, with the 1975-76 occurrence ranked third. Several other indices have also indicated that the La Niña events of 2010-11, 1975-76, 1917-18, 1955-56 and possibly 1988-89, were among the strongest on record.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?Reportid=91746

MALNUTRITION: Argentine farmers halt grain sales

17 Jan 2011 Strike over export curbs rekindles a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.


Soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages [EPA]
Argentine farmers have halted sales of wheat, corn and soy in a strike over export curbs, rekindling a dispute that helped drive global grains prices to record highs three years ago.
The seven-day protest by growers, which started on Monday, could fuel supply concerns just as dry weather linked to the weather phenomena La Nina worsens the outlook for soy and corn production.
Farmers in Argentina, one of the world's biggest food suppliers, have been at odds with the government for years over export curbs aimed at taming inflation and guaranteeing affordable supplies of everyday staples.
They say the system of wheat and corn export quotas lets millers and exporters pay farmers low prices, and have urged the government to scrap the caps.
"These distortive, interventionist measures have been repeated for several harvests in recent years," Hugo Biolcati, leader of the Argentine Rural Society, said when the country's four farming groups announced the strike last week.
The protest is bad news for Christina Fernandez, the president, nine months from the October election in which she is widely expected to seek re-election.
The wave of farmer strikes that began in March 2008 over a tax hike on soy exports battered her popularity, hit Argentine asset prices and disrupted grains shipments at the height of the soy harvest.
However, the impact of this week's protest on grains prices will likely be muted because soy and corn harvesting has yet to begin.

La Nina effect
Government officials condemned the farmers for calling another strike, even warning of possible flour shortages, although Julian Dominguez, the agriculture minister, acknowledged wheat farmers' problems.
The government is taking steps to ensure mills and exporters paid fixed local wheat prices to farmers and punish those that did not.
Dominguez advocated an even stronger state role in the country's multibillion-dollar grains trade during a weekend newspaper interview.

La Nina
La Nina is a weather phenomena causing abnormal cooling of the central and eastern Pacific.
Generally, La Nina will mean that parts of the world that normally experience dry weather will be drier and parts with wet weather will be wetter.
La Nina translates from Spanish as "The Little Girl" and is meteorologically the opposite of the El Nino.
La Ninas occur on average every three to five years and will typically last for up to 12 months.
"What the grains trade needs in Argentina is the presence of the state in the market - going back to the model of the Federal Grains Agency or National Grains Board, a body made up of the grains exchanges, the state, the co-operatives, that can ensure the market works for farmers," he was quoted as telling Tiempo Argentino newspaper.
Low rainfalls began worrying the agriculture industry in December in response to La Nina diminishing rain over Argentina. Weather fluctuations have helped lift corn and soy prices close to their record highs of 2008 in recent weeks.
Soaring prices are good news for farmers, but the parched soils are worrying farmers across Argentina's famous Pampa plains.
Argentina is the world's leading exporter of soyoil and soymeal and the third-largest global supplier of soybeans. It is also a major wheat supplier and the second-largest corn provider.
Soy exports brought in $12.98bn in 2009, accounting for 23 per cent of total export earnings.
But this year, soybean group Acsoja has estimated that production would fall by 13 per cent as a result of water shortages.
La Nina, which affects weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region and in particular the amount of rainfall, is threatening to expand drought in the Americas while bringing more devastating rains to Australia, according to the US Climate Prediction Centre.
La Nina-inspired rainfall has pushed Australia into recording its third wettest year on record in 2010 while causing drought in grain-growing areas of the southern US as well as in Brazil and Argentina.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/01/20111175129401574.html