Why Do El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Events Continue to Surprise Us?
Michael H. Glantz Environmental and Societal Impacts Group National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder, Colorado, USA If someone were to ask me for a bottom-line assessment about climate-related surprise, I would be forced to conclude that many climate surprises are knowable (eg, anticipatable) at some level of awareness. Through a variety of methods – scenario-playing, computer modeling, historical review, paleoclimatic reconstruction, geological assessment and forecasting by analogy – one could argue that many of the potential physical climate surprises (type A) can be identified in advance as can the potential societal impacts of those surprising changes (type B) in the physical climate. However, problems often arise because we do not know what the characteristics of all of the attributes (eg, timing, intensity, duration, likelihoood of occurrence) of the surprising process or event are likely to be. Surprise arises as well from the way that people look at and perceive (e.g., i
