The severe to exceptional drought choking the lower Mississippi River valley is expected to improve this winter as the El Nino weather pattern brings better rains to the region, NOAA said in its U.S. winter weather outlook.

But lingering drought in the upper Midwest and forecasts for normal to below-normal precipitation across basins that supply tributaries such as the Illinois and Ohio rivers could slow the Mississippi River’s recovery.

Low water has slowed export-bound barge shipments of grain from the Midwest farm belt for a second straight year during the busy fall harvest season, making U.S. exports of corn and soybeans less competitive in the world market.

“We are expecting improving drought conditions for the lower to middle Mississippi Valley during the next few months. But for the hydrological impacts such as low river levels and low ground water levels, that will be a little slower to recover,” said Brad Pugh, operational drought lead with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

“The hydrological impacts could linger beyond the end of January,” he said.

The Mississippi River fell to an all-time low on Monday at the Memphis, Tenn. river gauge, eclipsing the previous low water record set nearly a year ago, according to National Weather Service data.

Shallow river conditions prompted barge shippers to restrict the amount of grain they haul to avoid getting stuck in the drought-parched waterway.

Still, areas of the lower Mississippi River have been closed to navigation at times over the past several weeks following vessel groundings or as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers crews dredged low spots to deepen the channel.

— Karl Plume reports on agriculture and ag commodities for Reuters from Chicago.

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Last year tied with 2015 as the fifth-warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, NASA said. That was despite the presence of the La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean, which generally lowers global temperatures slightly.

The world’s average global temperature is now 1.1 C to 1.2 C higher than in pre-industrial times.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Thursday it had ranked 2022 as the sixth warmest since 1880. European Union scientists this week said 2022 was the fifth warmest year in their records.

Climate assessments produce slightly different rankings depending on the data sources used and the way records account for minor data alterations over time, for example, a weather station being moved to a new location.

NASA said temperatures were increasing by more than 0.2 C per decade, putting the world on track to blow past the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5 C to avoid its most devastating consequences.

“At the rate that we’re going, it’s not going to take more than two decades to get us to that. And the only way that we’re not going to do that is if we stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Schmidt said he expected 2023 to be slightly warmer than 2022, due to a weaker La Nina cooling phenomenon.

“The global mean temperature will be even higher in 10 years from now,” said ETH Zurich climate scientist Sonia Seneviratne, adding that unless countries stopped burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels temperatures would continue to climb.

Weather extremes

The changing climate fuelled weather extremes across the planet in 2022. Europe suffered its hottest summer on record, while in Pakistan floods killed 1,700 people and wrecked infrastructure, drought ravaged crops in Uganda and wildfires ripped through Mediterranean countries.

Despite most of the world’s major emitters pledging to eventually slash their net emissions to zero, global CO2 emissions continue to rise.

Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere last year reached levels not experienced on earth for three million years, Schmidt said.

At this year’s COP28 climate conference, countries will formally assess their progress towards the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C goal — and the far faster emissions cuts needed to meet it.

COP28 host the United Arab Emirates on Thursday appointed the head of its state-owned oil company as president of the conference, sparking concerns among campaigners and scientists about the fossil fuel industry’s influence in the talks.

— Kate Abnett is Reuters’ European climate and energy correspondent in Brussels.

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Drought, which currently spans 59 per cent of the country, is expected to continue or worsen in the middle and lower Mississippi River valley as well as in much of the West and the Great Plains, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center said in its winter (December-February) outlook.

Above-average precipitation, however, expected in the Midwest and the Ohio River valley may provide some relief to the drought-parched waterway later in the winter, NOAA said, citing the effects of a third consecutive winter of La Nina, a climate phenomenon that alters weather patterns.

Water levels on the Mississippi River dropped to historic lows this autumn, at times halting barge shipments of grain, fertilizer, coal and other commodities on the major shipping waterway and revealing a century-old shipwreck.

Some 60 per cent of U.S. grain exports exit the country via the Gulf Coast. Crucial shipments of fertilizer, farm chemicals and road salt that move up the Mississippi River ahead of the winter have also been disrupted.

“Across the lower Mississippi Valley, we are favouring continuation of below-normal precipitation,” said Jon Gottschalck, chief of the Operational Prediction Branch of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

“That would certainly, if the prediction is realized, lead to continued low water levels and exacerbate drought conditions there.”

NOAA forecasters are also predicting drought conditions would persist or worsen in the West and in the southern Plains farm belt, where farmers are struggling to plant their winter wheat crop due to excessively dry soils.

Nearly 90 per cent of Kansas, the top U.S. wheat-producing state, is under some level of drought, the worst in at least eight years, according to National Drought Mitigation Center data.

— Karl Plume reports on agriculture and ag commodities for Reuters from Chicago.

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The data compiled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA also revealed that the last eight years were the eight hottest and the last decade was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880, officials said.

Global warming is “very real. It’s now, and it’s impacting real people,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview. Last year’s extreme heat wave in the U.S. Pacific Northwest, intense rains from Hurricane Ida and flooding in Germany and China were linked to global warming, he said.

A key indicator of climate change, the heat content of the world’s oceans, reached a record level in 2021, the agencies said. Oceans absorb more than 90 per cent of the excess heat trapped in the earth’s atmosphere by greenhouse gases, and those warmer waters influence weather patterns and changes in currents.

“What’s scientifically interesting about that is it tells us why the planet is warming,” Schmidt said. “It’s warming because of our impacts on greenhouse gas concentrations.”

According to NOAA, 2021 average temperatures were 1.51 F, or 0.84 C, above the 20th-century average, putting it just ahead of 2018. NASA’s analysis, which uses a 30-year baseline period, showed 2021 temperatures tied with 2018 as the sixth-warmest year.

The greatest warming occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, both on land and in the Arctic. The Arctic is warming more than three times faster than the global mean, the agencies said.

In an overview of its report earlier this week, NOAA said last year was the fourth-warmest on record for the United States.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nichola Groom.

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And La Nina, in turn, is expected to produce hard cold snaps over the Prairies, above-normal precipitation over southern British Columbia and relatively mild temperatures with more snow over Ontario and Quebec, according to private forecasting agency AccuWeather.

The U.S. National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center on Oct. 14 reported La Nina — a weather phenomenon marked by unusually cold temperatures on the equatorial Pacific Ocean — had emerged over the past month.

“Negative anomalies” have been observed at depth across most of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean over that time, the agency said.

It also puts the chance at 87 per cent that a “moderate-strength” La Nina will continue over the period from December this year through February 2022.

Forecasters’ consensus then calls for a return to ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation)-neutral conditions during the March to May 2022 period, the agency said.

AccuWeather, in a separate release Oct. 14 including the company’s annual winter forecast for Canada, said this La Nina’s effect, particularly over Western Canada, will likely be temperatures falling “even lower than they do during the average winter.”

Noting last winter’s weather was also under the influence of a La Nina, the company said a polar jet stream “amplified” by La Nina conditions can again lead to colder air and more frequent storms.

“The upcoming winter is expected to be fairly stormy from southern British Columbia through the Canadian Rockies with many opportunities for significant rainfall and strong winds along the coast,” AccuWeather meteorologist Brett Anderson said.

“Abundant” snowfall is expected throughout much of B.C.’s Coastal Range through the Rockies in western Alberta, he said in the company’s release.

“Based on what I see, I think this winter will be wetter than the past five winters in southern British Columbia,” he said. “I think this winter will certainly put a dent in the ongoing severe drought across south-central parts of the province. Conditions have already improved across southwestern British Columbia this fall as drought conditions have almost disappeared.”

Further east, he said, the polar vortex could be displaced from its normal area above the North Pole and drop into the Prairie region from time to time. “I believe we may see at least three extreme blasts of bitterly cold air dropping down into the southern Prairies this winter,” with temperatures dropping below -30 C at those points.

“This winter will likely end up colder than the winter of 2018-2019 and the coldest winter since 2013-2014 in the region.”

Cold snaps across the Prairies this winter should also force a secondary storm track well far to the south in the U.S., Anderson said, and drive storms through the U.S. Rockies and southern Plains of the U.S., before swinging northward into Eastern Canada.

“The majority of the snowstorms will track up into Ontario and Quebec,” he said.

Further east, the company said, the storm track skewing north and west, combined with “very high” water temperatures in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, favours a milder winter with average snowfall in Atlantic Canada. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Aside from the Rocky Mountains and some areas around the Great Lakes, the U.S. was largely still snow-free heading into that country’s Thanksgiving holiday.

Meanwhile, nearly all of Canada is already blanketed with snow and preparing for Christmas, aside from some areas in the Maritimes. Satellite imagery shows a line running right below the Canada/U.S. border, with snow to the north and bare fields to the south.

Manitoba has the lightest snowpack of the Prairie provinces, with only one to four centimetres across most agricultural areas, according to satellite data. The southeastern corner of Saskatchewan has similar conditions to Manitoba, while the rest of the province reported snow levels in 10 to 19 cm range.

For Alberta, the snow depth ranges anywhere from two to 22 cm across agricultural areas.

Eastern Canada was seeing a major snowfall Monday, with southern Ontario seeing as much as 20 cm of snow. The storm was tracking through Quebec and into Labrador, with the forecast calling for as much as 75 cm at Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

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However, the monthly world agriculture supply and demand estimates (WASDE) had very little effect on the markets, according to MarketsFarm analyst Mike Jubinville.

“I think what we’re seeing in the markets has more to do with the change in the precipitation model that came out almost simultaneously,” he said. The latest forecast from the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration called for rain over the U.S. Midwest for the weekend.

“That’s probably a more important issue than this USDA report,” he added, suggesting the markets had a knee-jerk reaction to the weather forecast.

“I don’t see anything [in the July report] that warrants a double-digit decline in the futures prices,” Jubinville said.

The western side of the U.S. Midwest has received rain and soil moisture levels were OK, while the eastern portion has been dry, he said. The rain would provide a boost to crops across the Midwest at a critical point in their development.

“We’re dealing in ‘the weather market silly season,’ which is typical for July,” Jubinville said, noting things could easily change in a few days.

“If these rains come, the USDA’s yield estimates maybe low and that may factor into some of the selling that’s been going on,” he added.

USDA dropped its carryover projection for 2020-21 corn from June’s report by 20.3 per cent to 2.65 billion bushels. However, the July estimate is 17.8 per cent greater than the estimated ending stocks for 2019-20.

Corn production was reduced by 6.2 per cent to 15 billion bushels as USDA’s estimate of planted acres was cut by five million, to 92 million, keeping in line with its acreage report at the end of June. Also, the department reduced its projection of harvested acres from 89.6 million to 84.0 million, while holding the yield forecast at 178.5 bushels per acre.

Total corn domestic usage remained at 5.2 billion bushels, 7.2 per cent more than in 2019-20. Exports also held at 2.15 billion bushels, keeping the 21.1 per cent jump from the previous year’s exports.

Soybean carryover for 2020-21 was increased by 7.6 per cent, to 425 million bushels. Nevertheless, that’s almost 31.5 per cent less than the 620 million bushels in leftover from the previous crop year.

Production was raised slightly by nearly a quarter of a point to 4.14 billion bushels. USDA’s July estimate stands 16.4 per cent more than the 3.55 billion bushels produced in 2019-20.

USDA bumped up June’s estimated planted soybean acres by 300,000, to now 83.8 million, and increased its projected harvest acres by 200,000, to now 83 million. The yield forecast was steady at 49.8 bu/ac.

Domestic usage was nudged up to almost 4.35 billion bushels in the July WASDE, which is significantly more than the 3.86 billion in 2019-20. USDA kept its June estimate for soybean exports of 2.05 billion bushels, which would be a 24.2 per cent increase over the previous year’s exports.

Total wheat ending stocks were raised more than 1.8 per cent from June to 942 million bushels. The July number is 9.8 per cent less than the 2019/20 carryover of 1.04 billion bushels.

Wheat production was cut by 2.8 per cent across the board from June’s report, with USDA now expecting 1.82 billion bushels in 2020-21. Compared to production in 2019-20, it’s a five per cent decline.

USDA lowered its call on planted acres from the 44.7 million acres in the June WASDE to 44.3 million in the July report. Also, the department cut its projection for harvest acres by nearly 2.7 per cent to 36.7 million acres. Yields were eased slightly, from 49.8 bu/ac. to 49.7.

There was slip of 0.9 per cent for domestic usage of all wheat, to 1.11 billion bushels, while exports remained at 950 million. The latter is 1.7 per cent more than the exports for 2019-20.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg.

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Farmers from Missouri to South Dakota have seen their corn and soybean fields flooded by swollen rivers as winter snow melts, a sign of what may be in store for North Dakota when temperatures warm.

“How quickly the flooding and devastation came to Nebraska and Iowa was an eye-opener, especially for our producers who are close to rivers,” said Jim Peterson, marketing director for the North Dakota Wheat Commission.

Farmers in the world’s No. 2 wheat exporter planted the fewest acres to winter wheat in 110 years, hampered by rainy conditions. Now heavy snows are threatening the seeding of spring wheat, which represents up to a third of total U.S. wheat production each year.

Planting of spring wheat, a high-protein class of wheat that is often blended with lesser grades of grain to improve milling quality for breads and pizza dough, typically begins in April in North Dakota, the largest producer.

But soils still frozen in some areas to a depth of five feet, and deep snows that threaten to melt and flood the Red River Valley, in eastern North Dakota, are likely to delay seeding. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week named the Red River basin among the U.S. areas at greatest risk of major flooding this spring.

“I am looking out my window, and … there’s two to three feet of snow,” said Joel Ransom, an agronomist with North Dakota State University in Fargo, the state’s largest city. Forecasts called for flood risks in Fargo to peak in mid-April, an indication that snow melt will have reached the Red River by then, Ransom said.

“That gives me a gut feeling that nobody is going to be able to get to field until some time after the middle of April.”

Spring wheat can still yield well if planted late, but farmers prefer to seed it early, ahead of corn and soybeans, to cut the risk of stress from summertime heat.

Spring wheat was North Dakota’s mainstay crop for generations, but soybean acreage has roughly doubled over the last decade, edging out spring wheat plantings in recent years due to rising profitability.

The U.S.-China trade war, however, has hurt soybean growers in North Dakota, where most of the crop is shipped to the Pacific Northwest for export to Asia. Some farmers see spring wheat as a safer bet, but the snow and recent wheat prices have them concerned.

“The marketing (and) trade issues… have caused some fear,” said Philip Volk, who farms near York, N.D., about 100 km south of Killarney, Man.

— Julie Ingwersen is a Reuters commodities correspondent in Chicago.

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Farm fields across the Midwest are saturated, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But with fairly limited snow cover, and a history of El Nino bringing drier- and milder-than-normal conditions to the Mississippi River’s watershed in the upper Midwest, grain shippers could see a less severe spring flood season in 2016, said federal and state climatologists.

Grain and livestock farmers, too, could benefit from a reprieve from the woes of spring flooding, which can sour crop production with delayed plantings and increased fungal or pest problems.

El Nino refers to a series of climatic changes linked to warming of sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which in turn affects weather patterns around the globe. The current event is one of the three strongest in the past 50 years, but appears to have peaked, Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said Tuesday.

“Should we see the more typical (El Nino) pattern take hold over the next couple of months, that would probably bode well for a quieter spring flood season,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.

NOAA will release its official spring flood outlook in the third week of March.

Grain shipments slowed

The Mississippi River and its tributaries, key shipping waterways used to transport grain from Midwest farm states to the Gulf Coast for export, typically swell to their highest levels between March and July.

Yearly low water levels normally occur in January and December. So some grain shippers were caught off guard by last week’s river surge that forced the closure of the busy Port of St. Louis and sidelined fleets on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

One large exporter was forced to divert several soybean trains that were slated for loading onto barges at St. Louis to another river elevator further downriver, traders said.

Spot cash premiums for soybeans delivered by barge to Gulf Coast elevators spiked to a 2-1/2 month high and corn premiums hit a 2-1/2 week high before easing this week amid light export demand.

“The lack of a big export program really softened the blow. If we’d had a normal export program on the books, we could have been hanging around those highs for weeks,” said one grain exporter who asked not to be named.

Barge freight rates and cash premiums for springtime barge shipments were steady with pre-flood levels, indicating little concern that the shipping problems would persist, traders said.

River section closed

An 80-km section of the Illinois River remained closed on Tuesday due to high water but the Port of St. Louis has been reopened to navigation, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The Mississippi River at St. Louis was at 31.9 feet at midday on Tuesday, well below last Friday’s crest of nearly 42.6 feet that was just seven feet below its historical high in August 1993, according to the National Weather Service.

As Mississippi River floodwaters stream south toward the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard has restricted barge tows on southern sections of the river to just 30 barges, down from 45 or more normally, due to strong currents from Missouri to Louisiana, said Operations Specialist First Class Jonathan Hood.

Southbound barge tows are also restricted to daytime hours only around cities such as Memphis and Vicksburg, where bridge underpasses are more difficult to navigate in high water, Hood said.

— Karl Plume reports on agriculture and ag commodity markets for Reuters from Chicago.

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More rain and snow are likely across the nation’s southern regions, extending from central California to Texas and Florida and up the East Coast to southern New England, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Its outlook did not forecast the intensity or frequency of storms.

While potentially good news for drought-stricken California, a single winter is unlikely to erase the state’s four dry years, the outlook noted.

“California would need close to twice its normal rainfall to get out of drought and that’s unlikely,” said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, in a statement.

The 2015-16 winter may be colder than usual from Georgia through New Mexico, while northern-tier states and the West Coast will see warmer than normal temperatures, the report noted.

The outlook reflects the influence of one of the strongest El Nino weather patterns on record, forecasters said.

El Nino is a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific that occurs every few years, with global weather implications. In Western and central Canada, an El Nino event is most often associated with above-normal temperatures and drier conditions during winter.

— Reporting for Reuters by Letitia Stein.

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