Much has been said about El Niño 97-98, some of it profound and some not. Several of the key findings from this assessment are reflected in an excellent short summary published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in January 1999. . . . The 1997/1998 El Niño was probably the strongest in recorded history; it disrupted the lives of millions of people on all the Earth’s inhabited continents. Not all climate extremes and severe weather events of the period, however, can be directly attributed to the El Niño event. Further, not all its impacts were negative, and some regions that were expected to suffer were not seriously affected. (Obasi, 1999) . . . As the WMO found on a global scale, we have documented the profound impacts of El Niño 97-98 in the United States. But, perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, the impacts in the United States were, in the aggregate, positive. Because El Niño shifted the geographical distribution of seasonal anomalies and because scientists were able to anticipate these shifts, many decision makers were able to profit from the early warnings to take compensatory actions. The accuracy of the predictions, and the successful use by decision makers of those predictions, offers the promise of the development of a more robust climate service in the United States. The remainder of this chapter summarizes the surprises, the lessons learned, and the legacy of El Niño 97-98. Once the rapid onset of El Niño conditions was detected late in the spring of 1997, forecasters successfully predicted the event’s strength and duration. The oceanic predictions reinforced the ensuing seasonal climate forecasts. The official seasonal outlooks issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the summer of 1997 skillfully predicted the fall, winter, and early spring 1997-1998 conditions in many parts of the United States many months in advance. The seasonal forecasts had an accuracy of greater than 50 percent for temperatures and of between 30 percent and 50 percent for precipitation, the highest levels of accuracy ever attained, a reflection of the benefits of the considerable research and ocean-monitoring efforts directed at the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over the past twenty years.
Ensuring fair levels of executive directors’ remuneration: Regulation and use of principles against the use of detailed legal rules in determining the most effective approach for setting executive pay levels. A discussion