STORY: Indonesian expert warns of early arrival of El Nino
DATELINE: June 27, 2023
LENGTH: 00:04:19
LOCATION: Jakarta
CATEGORY: ENVIRONMENT

SHOTLIST:
1. various of BMKG
2. various of streets in Jakarta
3. SOUNDBITE (English): ARDHASENA SOPAHELUWAKAN, Head of Center for Applied Climate Information Services at BMKG

STORYLINE:

Indonesia's meteorology, climatology and geophysical agency BMKG has announced that the Southeast Asian country is expected to experience El Nino phenomenon in the second half of this year with its peak coming in August.

Earlier this month, Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo said that extreme hot weather caused by El Nino phenomenon is predicted to drag up to 870,000 hectares of agricultural lands in Indonesia into drought and crop failures.

SOUNDBITE (English): ARDHASENA SOPAHELUWAKAN, Head of Center for Applied Climate Information Services at BMKG
"Basically El Nino is an interesting phenomenon. It's a coupled ocean and atmosphere phenomenon so when this large mass of warm ocean shifts to the central and eastern parts of the Pacific, it also disrupts the large scale of atmospheric circulation in the Pacific Ocean. And to quantify that, usually we use several indicators. We have several indexes that measure the strength of the El Nino. We have several categories of El Nino ranging from weak, moderate, and also strong. Presently, the intensity is still low or weak. But BMKG as the national climate service agency, predicts the likelihood of the coming El Nino to be on a moderate scale. There is an 80 percent of El Nino to have its onset quite soon in later this month or early July.
El Nino is actually a natural phenomenon. It's a natural climate variability, the natural cycle of the Pacific Ocean. Now it comes the part where the global warming comes into the picture. It, of course, influences how El Nino behaves. So both are interacting with each other and not only in its evolution, but also in its impact.
One implication that is going into the future, in Indonesia we may have a wetter climate during the rainy season, but we have a drier climate during the dry season.
The Indonesian area, which we call the maritime continent, is at the heart of the impact of El Nino. The warming sea that is shifted to the central Pacific and eastern Pacific has an impact of reducing the rainfall around Indonesia or around Southeast Asia. If the climate becomes drier, and the soil moisture in the forest area becomes quite dry, it is a suitable climate condition for fires to develop. The general impact in the Indonesian area will be a dry climate. We have communicated this specifically to at least four sensitive factors that are immediately impacted by El Nino, for instance, the water resources sector, forestry, agriculture, and also the disaster reduction sector."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Jakarta.
(XHTV)