'We will wait to avoid a possible rush and panic. In 1998, [crude palm oil] output dropped because of very dry and hot weather.'

Derom Bangun, Palm Oil Council

07/04/2009 (The Jakarta Globe) - Indonesia’s largely benign experience with the weather could be in for a jolt, with sea temperatures starting to rise, raising the possibility that El Nino, the tempestuous weather phenomenon that wreaks havoc on the world’s food supply, could return in August.

The Australian Meteorology Bureau announced last week that the equatorial surface of the Pacific Ocean had warmed through March and trade winds have begun to ease — the climactic conditions that ultimately produce El Nino, which means “the little boy” in Spanish.

However, Indonesian weather and agriculture industry officials said on Tuesday it’s far from certain that El Nino is on the way, or how serious it will be if it makes an unwelcome appearance. Global weather researchers are monitoring Pacific Ocean temperatures, with some still unconvinced. However, commodity traders, alert to suggestions of changes in weather conditions, temporarily drove up the price of palm oil in world markets. 

During three previous El Nino events, palm oil prices skyrocketed as yields in Indonesia and Malaysia, which produce 90 percent of the world’s palm oil, fell by as much as 15 percent. Wheat, rice, coconut oil, coffee and rubber are all vulnerable to crop disruptions.

Given the world’s fragile food balance, major weather occurrences, such as the tropical cyclones in Bangladesh in 2007 and Burma in 2008, can cause prices to spike. World rice prices almost tripled last year as governments from Egypt to the Philippines began hoarding or panic buying. “The climate pattern across the equatorial Pacific has moved further away from the La Nina-like conditions that had persisted in some El Nino Southern Oscillation indicators since late 2008,” the Australian bureau warned on its Web site. La Nina, or “the little girl,” is the cold phase of the phenomenon.

That doesn’t necessarily mean El Nino is on its way. Certainly trade winds, thousands of meters up in the atmosphere, had begun to weaken across almost the entire breadth of the tropical Pacific Ocean by the end of March, according to the Australian bureau.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration has also warned of the possibility of the emergence of an El Nino as early as May.

However, Soetanto, chief of the climatological and agro-climate weather quality analysis section of the National Meteorological and Geophysics Agency, said on Tuesday that he had not seen any signs.

“There are several analyses, including the Australian researchers, that there is a possibility that El Nino could arrive in August,”  Soetanto said. “But there are several reports that say otherwise. It will probably be around the end of May before more accurate predictions can be made.”

Derom Bangun, vice chairman of the Indonesian Palm Oil Council, said he has neither received any reports nor given warnings to producers at this stage.

“We will wait to avoid a possible rush and panic,” he said. “In 1998, [crude palm oil] output dropped because of very dry and hot weather; some plantations even burned.”

When trade winds slow, the vast tide of seawater across the thousands of kilometers of the Pacific Ocean comes to a stop and begins to heat up in the sun. Eventually, this enormous puddle sloshes up against Peru and Ecuador.

During the worst-recorded El Nino phenomenons in 1982 and 1983, weather-related disasters hit Australia, Africa and Indonesia, which suffered droughts, dust storms and brush fires, the San Francisco State University Department of Geosciences said.