2001), ‘Using El Niño/Southern Oscillation Climate Data to Predict Rice

Despite the impact of El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events on climate in the Indo-Pacific region, models linking ENSO-based climate variability to Indonesian cereal production are not well developed. This study measures connections among sea-surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs), rainfall, and Indonesian rice and corn production from 1971 to 1998. Year-to-year August SSTA fluctuations explain about half the interannual variance in paddy production during the main (wet) season. These effects are cumulative for rice: during strong El Niño years, wet season pro-duction shortfalls are not made up subsequently. For corn, the cumulative area sown is actually higher in El Niño years than La Niña years. Indonesia’s paddy produc-tion varies on average by 1.4 million tons for every 1˚C change in August SSTAs. The paper illustrates how an SSTA model might assist policy makers with budgetary processes, and private sector cereal traders with framing production expectations