Impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño Event in Costa Rica
Jeffrey R. Jones, Sebastian Wesselman, Markku Kanninen, Francisco Jimenez, Rosanna Lok, Patricia Ramirez, Eladio Zarate, Manuel Jimenez and Ezequiel Garcia (2000). Impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño Event in Costa Rica. Reducing the Impact of Environmental Emergencies through Early Warning and Preparedness in the Case of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). United Nations.
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Sub-type Technical report Author Jeffrey R. Jones
Sebastian Wesselman
Markku Kanninen
Francisco Jimenez
Rosanna Lok
Patricia Ramirez
Eladio Zarate
Manuel Jimenez
Ezequiel GarciaTitle Impacts of the 1997-98 El Niño Event in Costa Rica Series Title Reducing the Impact of Environmental Emergencies through Early Warning and Preparedness in the Case of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Publication Date 2000 Place of Publication Costa Rica Publisher United Nations Pages XLVII, 47 Language eng Abstract With the announcement of the 1997-98 El Niño at the beginning of 1997, Costa Ricans began a massive response at the national level. National media, government ministries, agriculture and fisheries began preparations based on prior experiences with El Niño phenomena since 1982. As such, Costa Rica represents an intriguing case study of early warning and response to climatic anomalies. Significantly, not all prevention strategies worked as planned, and some had unforeseen consequences. These experiences provide a revealing window on the possibilities of response to early warnings, and the limitations of such strategies. One initial conclusion of the review of the 1997-98 El Niño response is that Costa Rica in fact has adopted a “culture of preparedness,” as recommended by international disaster prevention efforts, such as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR 1998). This preparedness is especially clear in contrast to the lack of preparation on the part of other Central American countries. A more sobering observation is the delicate policy decision of climate prediction. As probabilistic statements, forecasts have a likelihood of error; the impact of mispredictions must be carefully weighed with the benefits of early preparation, and led to very different approaches on the part of the various organizations involved in the early analysis of the 1997-98 event, with different institutions favouring more and less speculative forecasts. UNBIS Thesaurus METEOROLOGY
CLIMATE
WATER RESOURCES
NATURAL DISASTERS
EL NINO CURRENT
COSTA RICACopyright Holder United Nations University Copyright Year 2000 Copyright type All rights reserved -
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