This page describes how material on IAMElNino.com is researched, sourced, checked and corrected. It exists so that a reader can judge how much weight to give anything published here, and so that mistakes have a defined route to being fixed.
Who Publishes This Site
IAMElNino.com is written and maintained by Christopher W. Corwin. It is an independent, individually run project. It is not affiliated with NOAA, NASA, the WMO or any government agency, and nothing published here is an official forecast.
Every article carries a visible byline and a publication date. Where an article has been materially revised after publication, it carries an updated date as well.
Source Hierarchy
Sources are used in the following order of preference, and the article states which tier a given number came from.
- Primary agency data. NOAA Climate Prediction Center diagnostic discussions, weekly Nino region index tables, RONI and ONI series, NOAA and NASA observational products.
- Other national or intergovernmental agencies. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, Peru's ENFEN and IMARPE, ABARES, Copernicus, the WMO.
- Peer-reviewed literature, cited with authors, journal and year.
- Named expert analysis, attributed to the individual and their institution.
- Secondary press coverage, used to establish what has been reported rather than to establish a fact.
A statistic that cannot be traced to a named source and a date does not get published. Where a figure comes from paywalled or secondary coverage and the primary could not be read, the article says so explicitly.
Data Vintage and Revision
Climate indices are revised. Weekly Nino region values update each Monday and are subject to revision after first posting. NOAA notes that recent RONI values are estimates that may change for up to two months because of the filtering applied to the underlying ERSSTv5 data.
Because of this, articles state the week or season a value refers to, not merely the value. Written summaries that are current only as of a stated date are labelled as such and separated from the live dashboard panels, which refresh independently.
Naming the Index
Conflating ENSO indices is the most common error in mainstream El Nino coverage, and correcting it is a recurring subject here. This site therefore commits to the following:
- Nino 3.4, Nino 3, Nino 1+2 and Nino 4 are named individually and never merged into "Pacific temperatures."
- The relative index (RONI) is the site default, because it is what NOAA CPC uses to classify events. Where a conventional or traditional ONI value is quoted, it is labelled as such.
- Weekly and seasonal values are distinguished, including the fact that they come from different datasets, OISSTv2.1 and ERSSTv5 respectively.
- Any claim of the form "strongest on record" names the index, the dataset and the baseline, because the answer changes depending on all three.
Observation, Forecast and Inference
These are three different kinds of statement and are kept visually and grammatically distinct.
- An observation is a measured value with a date and a source.
- A forecast is a probability or a model output, attributed to the issuing body, with its horizon stated.
- An inference is this site's own reading of the two, and is written so that a reader can disagree with it while still accepting the underlying data.
Most articles end with a falsifiable statement: what would confirm the piece, what would refute it, and by what date. A claim with no failure condition does not belong here.
AI-Assisted Research and Human Review
Articles on this site are drafted with AI research assistance. That disclosure appears on the articles themselves and is not buried here.
What it means in practice, and what it does not mean:
- AI tooling is used to gather sources, extract figures from primary documents, cross-check numbers against cached agency data, and draft prose.
- Every published article is reviewed by a human before publication. Numerical claims are checked against the cited source or against the site's own cache of NOAA data.
- Quotations are taken from documents that were actually retrieved and read. Quotes are not reconstructed from memory or paraphrase.
- Where a primary source could not be accessed, the article states that the figure rests on secondary reporting.
- Drafts are subjected to an independent fact-check pass before publication, and corrections identified in that pass are applied before the piece goes live.
AI assistance is a tool, not an author. Responsibility for what appears on this site rests with the named human author.
What This Site Does Not Do
- Attribute an individual weather event to El Nino. ENSO shifts odds across a season; it does not cause a particular storm.
- Publish a statistic without a source and a date.
- Treat model agreement as forecast skill.
- Predict severity where the evidence supports only elevated risk.
- Reproduce another publication's article. Where coverage is quoted, it is quoted briefly, attributed, linked, and analysed rather than reproduced.
Corrections
When a published factual claim materially changes, the article is corrected and the change is logged. The site maintains a public corrections log recording what was wrong, what it was changed to, and when.
Corrections are made promptly and are not silently overwritten. If you believe something here is wrong, please say so via the contact page. A specific pointer to the figure and the source is more useful than a general objection, and will get a faster fix.
Market and Commodity Commentary
Some articles, including the Market Watch series, discuss commodity prices that are sensitive to ENSO conditions. Those pieces are educational analysis, not investment advice. Specifically:
- Nothing published here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, commodity, future, contract or other instrument.
- No content here is personalised to any reader's circumstances, and no reader's circumstances are known to the author.
- Price levels quoted from data aggregators may reference contract-for-difference or over-the-counter instruments rather than exchange settlement prices. Where that is the case, the article says so.
- The series exists to separate what markets have priced from what has physically happened. Those are different things, and the difference is the entire point.
- No guarantee of any price outcome is made or implied.
Funding, Advertising and Conflicts
This site is supported by display advertising served through Google AdSense and by voluntary reader tips via Ko-fi. Advertisers have no input into editorial content, no advance sight of articles, and no ability to influence what is published or how it is framed.
The author holds no position that is disclosed as being influenced by anything published here, accepts no payment for coverage, and publishes no sponsored posts or affiliate placements. If that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the affected article.
How advertising affects your data is described in the privacy policy.