Gore Blames "Global Warming"
For Severe El Nino Forecast

LOS ANGELES — Never one to miss an opportunity for demagoguery, Vice President Al Gore suggested here last week that so-called "global warming" may be making the El Nino weather phenomenon more severe and frequent.

In a speech to a conference of state and federal officials preparing for the prospect of severe weather next year, Gore said scientists have not determined whether El Nino, a vast pool of warm water in the Pacific, is linked to global warming.

"But if the pattern that's held since the late '70s continues to hold true, then we will look back (at today's conference) as a real turning point when we begin to prepare for events like this that become more commonplace," Gore said.

"I hope they don't become more commonplace, but that's what the pattern appears to indicate," he said. Gore is the Clinton administration’s front man in its campaign to sell a still-unspecified international "global warming" treaty to be signed In Japan in December.

Gore's speech also served as the first stop in a four-day Democratic Party fund-raising trip that was to take him back and forth across the country twice. The trip came as Attorney General Janet Reno considered whether to extend her investigation of Clinton fund-raising abuses.

Scientists believe El Nino will be the strongest it's been since 1982 when it killed 2000 people worldwide and caused $13 billion in damages. Californians suffered torrential rains and mudslides and homes were destroyed.

Based on previous El Ninos, the National Weather Service said this winter could be rainier and cooler in the Gulf States and in Arizona and Southern California.

It could be warmer and dryer in the Northern Plains and Great Lakes. One recent prediction would put this winter's mean temperature in the Great Plains at five to six degrees above normal.

The first time Indiana farmer Fred Peterson met El Nino, the result was disaster: 2400 acres of shriveled corn and soybeans. It took Peterson years to recover from the winter of 1982-83, and the drouth linked to El Nino.

Now he's hearing breathless reports foretelling the "worst" El Nino. "The thing that got me, they said this was probably the strongest one of the century," Peterson said. So, anxious about next April's planting, he did the only sensible thing. He called an expert.

Was another El Nino calamity approaching?

The scientist was not helpful. "Like everything else, he couldn't say," recalls the 59 year-old farmer.

Americans everywhere are scratching their heads, nervously wondering what to make of the strange weather event with a Spanish name.

If El Nino is blamed for the smoky haze over Southeast Asia because it delayed monsoons in tinder-dry Indonesia; if it parches Australia and southern Africa; if it can dry up South America's east coast while sending deluges to that continent's west coast, what can happen here?

For the most part, they're getting the same answers that Peterson got: Yes, bad things might happen — but not necessarily.

The most dramatic and dangerous weather attributed to El Nino occurs outside this country. Still, the prospect of a repeat of the winter of 1982-83 — and its killing floods, heavy snows and drouth — is frightening.

Given the variables, this winter's El Nino is unlikely to have the same effects in America as did the last major manifestation, said H.M. van den Dool, a research meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Camp Springs, Md. For one thing, the warm water is not in the same spot as it was in 1982-83.

There is also the difference in how this one is being perceived: "The big difference with '82-83," van den Dool said, "is we didn't know in advance."

Expectations for this El Nino are based on information collected and studied only since the mid-1980s. Scientists applied technology in earnest to understand El Nino, learning how it works and what it does. Satellites track El Nino now, as do buoys equipped with monitoring devices.

All this attention helped detect the warmest El Nino in 150 years, since the days sailors dipped buckets into the briny deep, popped in a thermometer and wrote down the temperature.

Yet even the scientist who inadvertently set off the drumbeat about El Nino says no one can be absolutely sure what will happen, weatherwise.

"I'm amazed at the loose statements," said climatologist Jagadish Shukla, "without the statement that there is a certain amount of uncertainty."

He added, "What has been lost in this whole media hype is, we are witnessing the birth of a new science, and that new science is climate prediction."

Shukla triggered the uproar and concern with something he said in late August at a Geneva meeting of the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations' weather agency.

"It will likely be the biggest El Nino in 150 years," said Shukla, who is a George Mason University professor and president of the Institute of Global Environment and Society. "We have never observed such high ocean temperatures in July in 150 years."

Reports of Shukla's remarks also noted that the 1982-83 El Nino, the first pegged to death and destruction, killed nearly 2000 people worldwide and cost $13 billion in damage.

Californians suffered torrential rains and mudslides; homes were destroyed. But by far, most of the trouble was elsewhere: drouth in Brazil, Africa and Australia; storms in the central Pacific.

"There have been other El Nino events between then and now, but no interest," said Michael Glantz, a political scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "This one has caught people's attention because of the fear of devastation."

Now Californians haunted by the 1982-83 mudslides and floods are packing sandbags. Emergency workers are brushing up for flood rescues. Homeowners are clearing gutters and patching roofs.

The forecasts for this country are general, at best.

"The message is really to keep watching these patterns," said Kevin Trenberth, an early El Nino researcher who heads climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "If the patterns of the weather seem to be set in a certain way, it could be El Nino."

And as soon as Americans get used to El Nino, there's another climatic shaker in the wings. It's the mirror opposite of El Nino, when the Pacific waters turn colder than usual and play the same weather tricks, in reverse _ rain where it was dry, and vice versa.

Get ready for "La Nina."

"You know this event is going to be a cold event in 12 months, a La Nina," Shukla warned.