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OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

Recent El Niño Brought Downpour of Media Coverage

El Niño, an oceanic and atmospheric phenomena that was once known only to scientists, garnered a cult following during its latest appearance.

by Steven R. Hare, International Pacific Halibut Commission, Seattle, Wash., USA

Media coverage of the 1997-1998 tropical ocean warming event made the term "El Niño" a household word. So pervasive was coverage of El Niño that it became the fodder of late night talk show monologues and an oft-invoked gremlin responsible for many of society's ailments. As a fisheries biologist studying climate impacts on marine resources, I followed the event very closely and created an El Niño Web site (http://www.iphc.washington.edu/PAGES/IPHC/Staff/hare/html/1997ENSO/1997ENSO.html) in the spring of 1997 when the magnitude of the event was becoming obvious.

As part of my daily routine in updating the Web page, I began tracking El Niño media coverage over the Internet. Between June 1997 and July 1998, I accumulated links to stories about the phenomenon. I attempted to maintain a constant level of effort so that the number of stories accurately reflected the level of coverage given the event as it progressed. In fisheries lingo, this is known as a Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE) index. Because Internet content is often removed after a period of time, a retrospective accumulation of daily stories would not yield as accurate a count as the contemporary CPUE index I maintained.

In general, I spent half an hour a day, Monday through Friday, searching for and linking to El Niño stories. By July 1997, several of the larger newspaper and media sites had developed dedicated El Niño Web sites. These included CNN, MSNBC, USA Today, ABC News, the San Diego Daily Tribune, San Francisco Gate (combined site for both the Examiner and the Chronicle), Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times, and Environmental Network News.

El Niño articles published by other media sources were found using two search engines: Yahoo! and HotBot. Yahoo! is perhaps the largest organizer of content on the World Wide Web and established a headlines page for El Niño news (http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/Tech/El_Niño/) in July 1997. HotBot (http://www.hotbot.com) was recently deemed to index the largest percent of Internet content among the major Web search engines.

Both Yahoo! and Hotbot are updated several times daily. Stories published by wire services such as Reuters and the Associated Press were only counted once. Also, stories that simply made passing references to El Niño were not included; To qualify, a story had to be about El Niño. Academic and government sites were excluded from search results and only English language stories were indexed.

The time series of the number of stories I found each month closely parallels the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) during the period of study (Figure 1). The number of stories I indexed rose steadily from five in June 1997 to a high of 136 in February 1998 and then decreased steadily to 31 in June 1998. The greatest discrepancy between the SOI and my mass media index occurred in January 1998, when the number of stories actually decreased from December (72 to 62) before doubling in February. The total number of stories indexed during the 14 months was 719. The number of unique sources for the stories was 101, and stories about El Niño were found in such diverse publications as Africa News Online, Golf Week, and Women's Wire. The greatest number of stories was published by CNN (122) followed by the Los Angeles Times (94). The subject matter of the articles was highly varied and changed steadily as the event progressed. Early stories focused on predictions that the 1997-1998 event would likely challenge the 1982-1983 event as the strongest in modern history. By October, stories started appearing on preparations being undertaken to minimize the impact of El Niño-fueled storms along with estimates of the potential worldwide damage in dollars.

In November and December, accounts about actual impacts—speculatively linked to El Niño—dominated the stories. Impacts ranged from the fires in Indonesia to floods in South America to impacts on Pacific Ocean biota such as fish and birds. There was a lull in January, with a number of stories suggesting that the El Niño event was waning. In February, however, the number of stories skyrocketed as the southwest and southeast United States both experienced record amounts of rainfall with widespread flooding and damage. In March, reports began to appear on the financial damage resulting from El Niño storms along with stories about the accuracy of El Niño forecasts several months before the onset of the event. Reports in May about the decline in size of the warm pool were quickly followed by stories in June about an impending La Niña event. The number of Internet stories increased again in July 1998 as more media coverage was devoted to La Niña. Much of the interest in La Niña was spurred by the NCAR-sponsored La Niña summit held from July 15 to 17, 1998. More information about the summit can be viewed at Web site http://www.dir.ucar.edu/esig/lanina/.

One feature of the mass media coverage of the El Niño event that amused climatologists and others familiar with the mechanics and climate impacts of El Niño was the sensational nature of some of the story headlines. A few of the more humorous (and not necessarily inaccurate) include the following:
     •El Niño: Four Seasons in One Day (The Press (New Zealand), August 9, 1997)
     •Cloudy, Chance of Annihilation (tongue in cheek article, New York Times, September 16, 1997)
     •El Niño Could Cause Havoc for Great Lakes (Environmental Network News, October 28, 1997)
     •El Niño Ravages Sea Turtles (ABC News, November 13, 1997)
     •Rain Got You Down? El Niño Has Californians Bumming Out (San Francisco Chronicle, February 1, 1998)
     •El Niño Attacks California (ABC News, February 23, 1998)
     •El Niño's Cruelty Rains on Central, E. Africa (Washington Post, March 2, 1998)
     •Hey Dude! El Niño Spawns Outrageous Waves (CNN, March 15, 1998)
     •El Niño's Reign Might Be Over (Los Angeles Times, April 19, 1998)
     •Crews Retake Beaches from El Niño (Los Angeles Times, April 24, 1998)
     •Heartbreak of El Niño's Wrath Visited upon Parks (San Jose Mercury News, May 2, 1998)
     •El Niño Refuses to Let California Go (MSNBC, May 13, 1998)
     •El Niño Takes a Large Gulp out of the Panama Canal (Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 1998)
     •Attack of the Bugs—Warm Winter has Wrought a 'Swarm' Spring, Summer (USA Today, May 25, 1998)
     •Adios, El Niño—It's Time to Bid This Temperamental Baby 'Bye-Bye' (Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1998)
     •La Niña gets Ornery (US News & World Report, July 27, 1998)
     •El Niño Even Has Cuba on the Ropes (MSNBC, July 30, 1998)

As the old saying goes, "everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." Thanks to the mass media coverage of the 1997 El Niño event people are speaking more knowledgeably not only about the weather but about factors that influence the weather we experience. As for doing anything about El Niño, the scientific community enjoyed its greatest success in forecasting this event's timing and impacts several months before they actually occurred.

With all that free advertising it is quite likely that additional funding will be provided to study El Niño and related phenomenon, such as the recently identified El Niño-like decadal climate variability. For the sake of marine populations impacted by climate variability I hope some of that funding is for directed ecosystem research.

Source: Eos, October 6, 1998, p. 481.
A Few Words From the Author

I am a fisheries biologist at the International Pacific Halibut Commission. A Pacific halibut is a large-bodied (up to 500 pounds in weight) flatfish that lives on the continental shelf of the North Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea to California. My organization is responsible for the research and management of the halibut resource, for which there is a very large fishery. The halibut population, and annual catches, are currently at their highest levels in the 100-year history of the fishery, so I think we have been pretty successful. My role at the Commission is to conduct research on the many factors that cause fluctuations in the abundance of halibut over time, including factors such as fishing, climate, and predators. In a recent study, I worked with several other biologists to document the impact of strong El Niño events on fish populations of the North Pacific.

That I ended up studying fish in the ocean is a bit surprising since I grew up in Michigan, north of Detroit, almost as far from the ocean as one can be in the United States. My interest in the fish stems from a lecture I heard by the eminent marine biologist Jacques Cousteau in Monaco when I was 12. At that time, my family was in the midst of an 18-month tour of Europe and from that point forward I strove to learn all I could about the ocean and the life within. I obtained my undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, where I majored in biological oceanography. Before starting graduate school, I joined the Peace Corps and worked on a remote island in the South Pacific managing a reef fishery. I earned both my master's and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Washington's College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences.

My advice to aspiring scientists is to follow your interests. By sticking to what I was really interested in, and not worrying about whether I would get rich, I have had a succession of wonderful jobs. Better yet, try to combine multiple interests—in my case, they are travel and fish—and you can create for yourself an immensely rewarding career. @caption:Fig. 1. A mass media index of the Internet coverage given to the 1997-1998 El Niño event plotted against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). Values prior to June 1998 multiplied by -1.