Study on ENSO and its Impact in China

Qian Ye
Center for Development and Application of Atmospheric Sciences Research
Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences

The phrase "El Niño" was first introduced in Chinese scientific literature by Lu Jiong, a Chinese geographer, in 1950. Until 1980, however, the El Niño event was viewed by Chinese scientists as a local phenomenon in the eastern tropical Pacific with no impact on climate in China. In 1980, Professor Wang Shaowu at Peking University published the first paper in China on the interaction of atmospheric and oceanic processes. Since then, studies on the possible connection between El Niño episodes and climate events within China gradually became a hot research topic in the Chinese meteorological community.

During the past twenty years, with great improvements in both climate observing technology and numerical model simulation, Chinese scientists confirmed that there are some definite correlations between the ENSO events and the following: the number of typhoons in the western Pacific Ocean, sea surface temperature anomalies in the warm pool, the amount of snow cover on the Tibetan Plateau, and the onset of the Indian monsoon, the South China Sea monsoon and the Australian monsoon.

Unfortunately, to date few studies have been done on the social and economic impacts in China of El Niño and La Niña events. The reasons for this time lag in interest are understandable. Firstly, there are still many uncertainties in the mechanism of the ENSO events which are under intensive scientific investigation. Therefore, many scientists in China are reluctant to share their preliminary results with the general public. As a result, there has been a lack of understanding by the general public who have been much more concerned about the social impacts of ENSO than its physical causes. Not unlike many other countries, social data, such as economic damage or benefit related to ENSO, have not been collected routinely, making an objective evaluation of its impacts difficult. Secondly, there are no multidisciplinary academic programs in universities in China to teach meteorology students how to communicate with users including policy makers, decision makers in economic sectors and the general public. Because of this absence of trained multidisciplinary professionals in China, studies on ENSO's socioeconomic impacts were rare before 1995.

As a result of the 1998 Great Flood of the Yangtze River, which was blamed by the scientific community to a large extent on the 1997-98 ENSO, among other factors, government policy makers and the public demand to know more about climate and its impacts from the meteorological community. The community is now paying much more attention to the application of meteorological information for the development of society and economy. Studies on ENSO's impact on crop production and on human health in China, for example, have been conducted with the help of researchers working in different fields such as the social and medical sciences. Traditionally, they have not considered the climate system as a major factor in their studies.

Today, there are several key national projects in China under way with El Niño as a major research component. It is our expectation that in near future more reliable and accurate climate forecasts could be developed in order to help policy makers and other decision makers enhance the development of Chinese society and economy.

—Qian Ye

Qian Ye is the Director of the recently established Center for Development and Application of Atmospheric Sciences Research, Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Visiting Scientist at ESIG/NCAR. For more information about the activities of his Center, please contact him at qian_ye@263.net