Ag Weather Forum

2015 Versus 2010

Bryce Anderson
By  Bryce Anderson , Ag Meteorologist Emeritus
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El Nino temperatures are underway in the Pacific Ocean. Five years ago in 2010, the Pacific temperatures moved into a La Nina phase instead. (NOAA graphic by Nick Scalise)

We've seen and heard of a rapid pace of corn and soybean planting in the northwestern Corn Belt this season. Many producers are at least finished with their corn planting and are now onto soybeans, or in some cases already finished with both the primary row crops, with the planters parked for the season. This is not quite the dramatic "planting in March" scenario that we had during the flash drought year of 2012, but it is very similar to the 2010 crop year. That year is one of the first -- if not the very first -- year when the terrific pace of planting due to both big machinery and RTK technology in tractors combined for more than 30 percent of the intended U.S. corn acreage to be planted in just one week's time.

But, there's another facet of the 2010 crop year that has also been discussed in and around the market -- and that is, how the 2010 weather pattern evolved. The start of the year was fine and dandy, but the end of the year was not. The final USDA 2010 corn production figure of 12.4 billion bushels was five percent below 2009, but was a big drop below the first official estimate in August of 2010, at 13.4 billion bushels. And, U.S. corn yield in 2010's final rendition was 152.8 bushels per acre, 11.9 bu/A below 2009, and 12.2 bu/A less than the first official estimate in August.

What happened to knock the corn crop in the latter part of the season? You can assign credit -- or blame -- to the fact that, during the summer of 2010, the Pacific Ocean moved from a neutral to weak El Nino to the onset of a La Nina (cold equator region) pattern that lasted in some phase through the first quarter of 2012.

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Now, what about this season? Does the rapid pace of planting in the northwestern Corn Belt this year suggest that we are on the verge of having another 2010-type season show itself? The answer, at least from the ocean condition angle, is "no."

As the graphic illustration with this posting shows, the entire Pacific equatorial region, from South America to the International Date Line, has sea surface temperatures of at least 1 degree Celsius above normal. And, in the case of the eastern Pacific, data collected by my colleague Mike Palmerino show the eastern Pacific temperatures at +1.3 deg C versus normal for the month of April 2015. That figure was 0.4 deg C warmer than the March eastern Pacific reading of +0.9. The April 2015 reading was also more than a half-degree Celsius warmer than April 2010's figure of +0.7 deg C.

So, El Nino is here and is likely to stay in effect through the rest of the 2015 crop season. And, as we have discussed several times recently, this is a promising pattern for crop production, as compared with the issues brought on by La Nina five years ago.

Bryce

Twitter @BAndersonDTN

(ES/SK/AG)

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