Contact: Marilu Trainor                         9/4/98
         Stephanie Kenitzer

                           MEDIA ADVISORY
                                  
            LA NINA   CURRENT PREDICTIONS AND IMPACTS  
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PLANS BRIEFINGS FOR MEDIA AND CUSTOMERS IN
                  FOUR WESTERN CITIES IN SEPTEMBER 

WHAT: Press and customer briefings sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service Western Region will be held in four cities this month on the current development of La Nina in the tropical Pacific and the impacts on short-term and long-term weather patterns.

Forecast models, data buoys and satellite images are providing scientists with indications of a developing La Nina episode. La Nina is an abnormal cooling of the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean that has important impacts on weather patterns around the globe. NOAA scientists, together with their academic and international partners, have made great strides in understanding La Nina and the resulting weather patterns. Better predictions of potential extreme climate episodes and their impacts could save the United States billions of dollars in damage costs if water, energy and transportation managers and farmers were able to plan and avoid or mitigate losses.

WHEN/WHERE: Four sessions are planned for various geographic areas. Detailed information about the locations, etc. are available by contacting one of the NWS offices listed at the end of this advisory.

Sept. 9: Burbank, CA
Dr. Leetmaa* will brief customers from 1:00-2:00 p.m., and the media briefing will be held 2:00-2:30 p.m. Media Q's and A's and on-one-one interviews will be held from 2:30-3:00 p.m. (Media are also invited to the customer briefing as well.) Meeting will be held at:
General Motors Training Center, 1105 Riverside Drive, Burbank
(Going Eastbound on Hwy 134, exit at Bob Hope Dr.)
(Going Westbound on Hwy 13, exit at Buena Vista Street)

Sept. 11: Seattle, WA Dr. Leetmaa* will brief customers and media together from 1:00-2:00 p.m.; media interviews will take place from 2:00-2:30 p.m. at the NOAA Auditorium #9, 7600 Sand Point Way, NE, Seattle. Driving information available at http://www.seawfo.noaa.gov

Sept. 16: Phoenix, AZ Dr. Kousky* will brief media and be available for interviews from 1:00-2:25 p.m. Customers will be briefed 2:45-4:00 p.m. at the Salt River Project Admn. Bldg., PAB 500, 1521 N. Project Dr., Tempe, AZ (Media are also invited to the customer briefing as well.)

Sept. 17: Salt Lake City, UT Dr. Kousky* will brief media and be available for interviews from 1:00-2:15 p.m. Customers will be briefed from 2:30-3:40 p.m., Federal Building, Room 2404, 125 S. State St., Salt Lake City, UT. (Media are also invited to the customer briefing as well.)

*WHO: Ants Leetmaa, Ph.D. is director of the Climate Prediction Center. The CPC is a division of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which is a component of the National Weather Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Leetmaa has 25 years of research and development experience in the areas of large-scale ocean circulation and studying ocean-atmosphere interactions. He is a recognized expert in the areas of ocean analyses and the development of coupled ocean- atmosphere models for forecasting of seasonal to interannual climate variations associated with the El Nino/ Southern Oscillation phenomena.

Vernon Kousky, Ph.D. is a research meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center. Dr. Kousky specializes in monitoring global climate variability, especially that related to the El Nino/ Southern Oscillation. He is chief editor of the monthly Climate Diagnostics Bulletin, which provides a description of global precipitation and atmospheric/oceanic circulation anomalies, and a discussion of the latest forecasts for tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies. Dr. Kousky's research interests include interannual and intraseasonal climate variations, El Nino and La Nina, and synoptic climatology for the Southern Hemisphere.

BACKGROUND

The mission of the Climate Prediction Center is to make long range forecasts starting with those for six to 10 day averages, and extending to monthly and seasonal ones out to a year in advance; to provide real-time climate monitoring and products for both U.S. and global domains; to study climate fluctuations on time scales from weeks to decades in order to incorporate the effects of these in the forecasts. Through its monitoring and prediction activities, the CPC assists agencies both inside and outside the federal government in coping with climate-related problems in food supply, water resources, energy allocation and emergency management.

WEB SITE La Nina Tutorial available on NOAA's Climate Prediction Center at http://nic.fb4.noaa.gov