An excavator clears mud from damaged houses following deadly flash floods and a mudslide in Nuwakot district, Nepal, Sept. 21.REUTERS/YONHAP
Ha Kyung-ja
The author is an executive director of the APEC Climate Center and professor emeritus at Pusan National University.
Wednesday will mark one month since catastrophic flooding struck Nepal after a massive glacier and rock collapse near Langtang Lirung in the Himalayas, close to the Nepal-Tibet border, at an altitude of about 5,200 meters (17,060 feet).
The collapse was powerful enough to generate seismic waves equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake. The resulting flood killed 1,451 people, while 6,150 remain missing, including nine Koreans, according to Nepalese statistics.
While Nepal suffered enormous human and economic losses from a glacier collapse and flooding associated with global warming, the Panama Canal on the other side of the world has faced severe drought. Falling water levels have restricted ship traffic, raising logistics costs and disrupting global supply chains.
Such extremes vividly illustrate the climate crisis confronting the world. Climate change is no longer simply an environmental issue. Its consequences increasingly threaten the global economy, food security and ultimately human survival.
Against this backdrop of growing climate variability, attention is turning to the strengthening El Niño in the equatorial eastern Pacific, east of the International Date Line. The World Meteorological Organization and major climate forecasting models predict that El Niño will intensify further during the second half of this year.
El Niño and La Niña, which can trigger abnormal weather patterns around the world, interact with changes in atmospheric pressure across the tropics. Scientists call this vast coupled ocean-atmosphere system the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO.
Its behavior and effects are becoming more complicated as the warming trend in the tropical Pacific interacts with multidecadal fluctuations in ocean temperatures. The crucial question is therefore not El Niño itself but how far in advance we can anticipate its climatic consequences and prepare for them.
The APEC Climate Center, or APCC, provides scientific climate forecasts to help Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation member economies prepare for climate threats. But policy support is essential if scientific diagnosis and forecasting are to translate into effective responses.
To protect Korean society and the economy against a stronger El Niño, I propose three priorities.
First, Korea must substantially improve climate forecasting accuracy while diversifying forecasts to meet the needs of government and industry. Forecasting periods and methods should become more varied so climate information can be useful in real-world settings.
Forecasts should also go beyond temperature and precipitation to include variables such as solar radiation, soil moisture and wind speed. That would allow tailored climate information for purposes including food security, forest protection and energy reserves. Government and businesses should incorporate such information into policies and risk-management systems.
Second, Korea needs ultrahigh-resolution climate forecasting capable of reflecting local terrain, including individual mountains and valleys, supported by adequate computing infrastructure.
Unlike weather forecasts, which focus on short-term changes, climate forecasts deal with longer-term trends. To become genuinely useful on the ground, they must provide far more detailed information at the local level.
Accurately identifying climate variations caused by terrain, such as narrow valleys, could help determine in advance how much wildfire risk or the likelihood of localized torrential rainfall will increase in a particular area during the coming season. That could help prevent crop losses and other damage.
Analyzing such vast quantities of locally tailored climate data quickly and accurately requires proactive national investment in high-speed climate forecasting computing systems.
Third, Korea should establish a permanent system of collaborative production between climate-information providers and those who use the information in the field.
Climate experts and end users must communicate continuously to find the most effective applications. Researchers need sustained exchanges with practitioners in climate-sensitive fields such as disaster prevention, agriculture and water management to develop tailored solutions to practical problems.
Climate forecasting should also be incorporated proactively into macroeconomic and supply-chain risk management. It could help detect potential disruptions to maritime logistics and allow companies and policymakers to diversify sources of imported raw materials before a crisis develops.
Climate disasters are becoming harder to treat as isolated events. Better forecasts alone cannot eliminate their risks. But more accurate, localized and practically useful climate information can give governments, industries and communities more time to prepare — and turn scientific foresight into concrete resilience.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
