Why Should I Care?

Over the weekend I saw a line in a news feed that relayed some of the following key phrases – ‘NASA scientist’ … ‘El Nino’ … ‘Minimal Impact’.  Of course at the time I was in the midst of something and did not have time to pull up the article and read the details.  However, over the next couple of days the more I thought about it, the harder it was for me to believe that a NASA scientist would make such a bold statement.  I started to wonder if this might not be a good case of the news cycle we laughed a bit about back in August, simply a bit of glorifying some key aspect of a news release to a point where it no longer was recognizable.

After a long search I was unable to find the exact headline that had caught my eye originally, but what surprised me even more was some of what I did find.  Now, first off let’s start with the original NASA news release and a couple of quotes from Dr. Bill Patzert:

•  ”For the past few months, the trade winds have weakened somewhat, but whether the new Kelvin waves traveling eastward across the Pacific will be adequate to pump this El Niño up enough to reinvigorate it and deliver any real impacts remains uncertain,”
•  ”Some El Niños are show stoppers, but most are mild to modest, with minimal to mixed impacts,”
•  ”Unless present El Niño conditions intensify, I believe this El Niño is too weak to have a major influence on many weather patterns,”
•  ”Don’t give up on this El Niño,” he added. “He might make a late break and put his spin on this fall and winter’s weather systems.”

I found a couple of things interesting, first that even the NASA release provided very few complete sentences from the scientist, and second, even he seems uncertain what to expect from this year’s El Niño event.  Now the current status of things can be found here from the Climate Prediction Center and they also provide a weekly update of their long term outlook.  Certainly it is debatable what type of impact to expect and that seemed to be conveyed to some degree in the NASA press release. 

However, it seems that Dr. Patzert is on the record a bit differently in some other news sources.  Here are a few examples:

• San Diego Union Tribune – “El Niño likely won’t ease state’s drought”- Patzert quotes: “This El Niño is definitely puny,” ; “You have to reserve the name ‘El Niño’ for the real big events that only happen every 12 to 14 years,” he said. “It’s actually eroding the credibility of long-range forecasters and climatologists.”
• People’s Daily Online – “This year’s El Nino expected to be mild” – Patzert quotes same as above
• San Bernardino County Local News – “El Niño’s affect on winter uncertain”- Patzert quotes: “El Niños come in all sizes. The one in ’97-’98 was a Godzilla El Niño, but those only come every 15 years or so.” ; “El Wimpo” ; “The dice are loaded for a dry winter,” 

Now, I walk away from those articles with a different picture.  Certainly the quotes are pieces of a whole story and they chose to not necessarily print the details about uncertainty in the final magnitude of this event.  However, when a individual considered knowledgeable on the topic gives you that kind of verbiage to work with, certainly some responsibility falls with the original source. 

This is also not the first time for Bill Patzert on the El Niño topic.  Here are some things he has said regarding prior events:

• Los Angeles Times (2007) – “Wet winter forecast has come up dry”- Patzert Quotes: “The problem with forecasting El Nino is that it’s like shooting craps,”  ; “The dice are loaded with this global warming thing, but we don’t know exactly how they’re loaded.”
• CNN (2001) – “El Nino Is Coming Back”- Patzert Quotes: “Well, El Ninos actually only last for about a year. They have a relatively short lifespan, in contrast with La Nina, which actually lasted for more than three years now.” ; “Yeah, I know, it’s never adios with El Nino, it’s always hasta la vista, because El Ninos have been around for thousands of years, and he will show up approximately every four to seven years. But when you have an extra large, like we had in ’97, ’98, that’s really only every 20 or 30 years. “
• San Diego Union Tribune (2006) - “All signs point to the possibility of a wimpy El Niño”- Patzert Quotes: “At this point, it’s a little too early to count your chickens, ’cause this El Niño has definitely not hatched yet,” ; “A 50 percent chance is wishful thinking. Fifty percent chance is the scientific way of saying you don’t know. Right now, the only thing we’re trending toward is El Wimpo. That could mean anything here.

Now, I am all for personality and not reporting things so dryly that no one pays attention, but what is the right balance for people for are considered experts or someone called the “El Niño Expert”?  For people who have to plan based on the limited precipitation that California receives, does using flashy names and providing projections that do not properly convey the uncertainty really help?