Severe El Nino effect to drive local food prices up in the Philippines

MANILA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN): The persistence of upward pressure on food prices in the Philippines is more certain as United States-based climate experts see a 90-percent chance that the El Niño dry spell will prevail through the year and early 2024, and has significant probability of becoming a severe occurrence.

The American agency Climate Prediction Center (CPC) said in its latest monthly bulletin that while data gathered in June indicated a “weak” El Niño, there was a one-in-five chance of “an event that becomes ‘historically strong,” rivaling the [occurrences during the] winters of 1997-1998 or 2015-2016.