Drought Advisory.

Drought advisory issued by the Vanuatu Meteorological Service, Port Vila at 9:00
am local time, 13 November 2009.

During the past five months, climatic conditions across the equatorial Pacific region were
in favor of an El Niño event resulting in continued warming of ocean temperatures in the
Central equatorial Pacific and now at their highest levels since at least the El Niño event
of 2002. Similarly, the 30-day Southern Oscillation index that measures the pressure
difference between Tahiti and Darwin is now lower than any other time since 2005.
Coupled with the weakening of the Trade Winds during October and November enable
the 2 ۫C rise in temperatures over the central Pacific equatorial region The distribution of
tropical clouds has similarities to the patterns observed in the 2002 and 2006 El Niño
events. These changes have contributed to the below average rainfall recorded in our
meteorological stations in the past two months.

With the persistence of the El Niño conditions, Vanuatu in the next three months will
continue to receive below average rainfall and experience hot and humid weather as a
result of low cloud cover. Currently Vanuatu faces shortage of water in most islands with
the impacts slowly affecting the agriculture sector. The prolong dry period will continue
until the first quarter of 2010 with rain breaks still expected but will not be sufficient to
alleviate the dry period out of the threshold value. This drought event is forecast to persist
in Vanuatu for the next six (6) months should these climatic conditions persist.
With the below normal rainfall forecasted in Vanuatu, people are advised to take this
seriously and take measures to minimize the impact of drought in each sector in each
community, island, province and Vanuatu as a whole.

The Vanuatu Meteorological Service will continue to monitor this event very closely and
will continue to update on this in the next issue should this drought event intensifies or
weakens. People are advice to listen to Radio Vanuatu for more information on this
event.