Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Lodestar podcast. This week we are doing things slightly differently, and this will not be an episode of News in Brief, so I do apologize if you were looking forward to that. But we'll be back with regular news and brief from next week. This week instead, we are going to be talking to Matthew Dibb, Duty Director of Marine Operations at Polestar Global, and we are going to be looking at this year's extreme weather events, including El Nino and the hurricanes. Now, Matt recently did a report called Average Hurricane Seasons no Longer Mean Lower Risk for Shipping. So we're going to go into detail about report and see what Matt's advice is for shipping companies as they navigate this year's extreme weather events.
Hello, Matt. Welcome to the Lodestar podcast. It's great to have you on.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Hello, Charlotte. It is great to be here and thanks for having me.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: You're very welcome. Your first podcast, I believe it is.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: It is my first podcast.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Very exciting. Well, I am honored that you have joined me today. Can I start by asking you to introduce yourself and what you do at Polestar?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Hi, my name is Matthew Dibb. I'm, uh, I've been obsessed with the weather since I was five. I'm a duty Director here at Polestar Global within the Fleet Weather Division, where I oversee optimal ship routing and commercial shipping across the globe. Uh, we also monitor, uh, performance for vessels to be charter product compliant. And I've been with the company for over 20 years now, and I oversee a team of marine meteorologists and we're all accredited through the Royal Meteorological Society.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: That sounds super interesting. And here in England, we absolutely love talking about the weather, so I feel like I'm going to really enjoy this episode. So, to start off, I've been hearing a lot about El Nino. It's one of those weather terms I think quite a lot of people have heard, especially at the moment, but quite a few people, myself included, don't really understand it. So what exactly is it? And like, what does it mean for shipping?
[00:01:50] Speaker B: So, El Nino, or enso? El Nino Southern Oscillation is a reoccurring climate pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean, and it influences global weather between a warm phase and a cold phase. It shifts the jet stream and has influences on temperature and precipitation across the globe. So El Nino is the warm phase, and it is the interaction between the ocean and atmosphere. Normally we have trade winds in the eastern Pacific which push warm surface water into the western Pacific and it pools up Indonesia area and there's a lot of warm water over there. But in El Nino times the trade winds weaken and it can even shift directions. So all the warm water pools in the eastern portions of the Pacific and it's characterized by a three month average where the sea surface temperatures are at least a half a degree Celsius warmer than normal. And, and on the flip side on the cooler pattern La Nina, it's a half a degree Celsius cooler than normal during those times where the trade winds are actually stronger. And you do get more upwelling and cooler temperatures in the eastern Pacific. We call it ENSO neutral when it, it's in between and typically normal conditions.
So you did ask impacts on shipping.
So with El Nino for the impacts of shipping there's the, the global impact.
And El Nino was brought upon in the like 1600s for some fishermen in Peru and it means little boy Dinavidad because El Nino typically peaks in December and they were noticing with a countdown fishing and that upwelling the nutrient rich ocean water for fishing.
And they noticed that it was much warmer than water, much warmer water and less fish available. So that was like your first inclination of there's an economic impact going on here back in the 1600s for this to actually occur. Now obviously we keep a lot more records now. Noah's been keeping records of the El Ninos, good records probably back through the mid-1900s.
And with El Nino globally we do notice several tendencies for what goes on. So we do notice in the Atlantic we tend to have less hurricane tropical cyclone events because there's some stronger wind shear that develops wind shear being changes with wind direction and speed with height and that tends to suppress tropical activity. Tropical storms like they don't like a lot of changing wind speeds and directions with height. There's also some sinking air that's kind of the impact there. We do tend to notice it's drier than normal in the Caribbean and that can have some pretty big impacts.
For example, there was, you know, the Panama Canal is. It had, we've had some issues there.
I believe it was 23, 24 with that El Nino where there was less rainfall over Gatun Lake, which is the main supply of water for ships transiting through the Panama Canal. It feeds, feeds the water so they can go through the locks and get through. And with there was less rain. That means they had to change the amount of frequency of ships that could pass through. And also the drafts, they were restricting drafts that some of the ships couldn't have as deep of a draft. So that changed things there. And something they shipping Companies may have to plan for. We're talking drier than normal conditions in Indonesia since that warm water pool is shifted much further east off the coast of South America, that could affect rice crops. Do the shipping companies have to consider different changes where they're getting their goods and move things around a little later? Start to the southwest monsoon in India. So these are all things that it globally tends to affect.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: But El Nino is not the only thing at play here. So in your recent report, you wrote that this year there was competing influences. So there's El Nino on one hand and then unusually warm Atlantic waters on the other. So what does that combination mean in real terms?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Well, the El Nino is one factor in a bigger equation of things. It's a big factor. But. But the trade winds being faster, as I mentioned, in the Atlantic, is that there all the time? The entire hurricane season? Not necessarily. You could have a two week break where things do ease off. And if you have warmer than normal ocean water temperatures in parts of the Atlantic at the Caribbean, the fuel is there for something to get going. There have been strong hurricanes in the past during El Nino years, so it's not out of the realm. We typically see it being a little bit less in an overall picture as far as the quantity of hurricanes and tropical storms.
Other things that are in consideration besides El Nino.
Saharan dust has been a big topic of conversation over the last few years. If you get stronger than normal trade winds coming off the coast of Africa, you're injecting dry, dusty air into the eastern Atlantic, which that's kind of our main development region in the mid to late portions of the summer. And, you know, injecting that is really going to suppress, you know, any, any tropical activity from developing.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: But when a hurricane does develop, what do you see as the biggest challenges for shipping companies?
[00:07:12] Speaker B: I'm not working at a shipping company. I'm a meteorologist. But from what we've seen in our interactions with shipping companies and the masters of the vessels, this is what we, I would say is a pretty big challenge.
I think it's timing and location, especially in the short term. So, for example, we see challenges for companies when a system is near very busy ports or very active shipping lanes. So in the, in the Atlantic, that's the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits, and in the Pacific, that's, you know, the South China Sea and east of China, those are big, hot, major trade routes.
So if a vessel's, you know, going in there, do we have to slow the vessel? Do we have to, you know, stop Them, do we have to deviate the route? Okay, that's, you know, and usually not a huge big logistics nightmare. It's when it's affecting a port. This is where it starts becoming a little bit more challenging.
Vessels coming into a port, do we have to slow them? Do they have to stop? Do they have to wait outside at that point? A lot of schedules have probably already been made and it's close to arriving. So they, their, their, their schedules for offloading cargo, loading cargo.
Same with leaving a port. Did they finish? Can we get them out? Do they have to shift offshore at an anchorage?
But probably the biggest is when they're at port and the system is potentially affecting the port directly.
This we noticed probably a lot of back and forth. Did the vessel finish cargo ops? There are times we have to move the vessel out of port and bring them back.
We'll recommend the vessel shift offshore to a safe location to allow the system to pass through. We'll try to give as much notice as we can. And there's usually a good chance if it's going to directly affect the port, the port gets closed and then the ships get kicked out and you want to give them enough notification to get out before it's too late. They could be closed at the last minute and it's gotten better.
Then there's not much you could do for them. Then they're sitting offshore anchorage and dealing with it out there. So there's a lot of back and forth with our clients and I'm sure they're dealing. You know, the captains are going through with the operators and shoreside to get approval and figuring out scheduling. I think that's a very big challenge.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean especially when we see issues at the ports, then it becomes what I said before, knock on effects. So you get port congestion and then, then you get container shortages and then you get missed schedules. And yeah, it's just a vicious cycle which then perpetuates all of that in different other ports and then it just feeds around the world. So yeah, definitely would echo that. I mean, clearly people are going to want to prepare for this and mitigate in any way that they can. And we reported on some advice from insurance company TT Club recently and they urged supply chain operators to review their risk management and resilience strategies. And they said that the Super El Nino isn't just a weather event, but it's actually a systemic risk multiplier and demands that the logistics and supply supply chain community takes proactive rather than a reactive approach.
And we're at an age now where technology in general for supply chains is quite sophisticated and it can help quite a lot with planning and visibility. But how sophisticated is that weather forecasting side of things and what do you think its role is going to be this year?
[00:10:18] Speaker B: So weather forecasting obviously gotten better. It continues to get better.
You obviously, you have AI, that's a big hot topic now. It's, it's got a ways to go, but it's learning. It learns from past events and similar patterns that are presented now and how it's evolved in the past. Can we, can we move that going forward? It's got some work to do, but it's a tool model ensembles are a big tool.
You obviously have your forecast model that will show a potential track and you have your official track from the agency, the governmental agency that's responsible for issuing the track. Ensembles help with giving probabilities and giving you confidence. That track. Changing the initial condition a little bit, you can kind of see what is there a good consensus with the track. Great. You do feel a little bit better about that. Scatterometer data sending a pulse of energy down to the sea surface.
That's a satellite and it determines the sea roughness and movement and it can derive what the wind speed and direction is from that. And it's covered all over the globe. And it's helped classifying tropical cyclones earlier than we possibly could have had if you didn't have hurricane hunters going in there or obs on the sea surface, or you're just relying on satellite imagery to kind of take a look at, at the system. So that has all helped get things better and giving more tools available for us.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Well, how then is that used in practice? I mean, you've got all this technology, but how do ship operators then decide whether to change course, slow down or delay a voyage? Like, what's the process there? Because, I mean, you can't stop a hurricane.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Great question for the ship operators. I mean, I mentioned AI with the behaviors is good, but are the shipping companies, do they have meteorologists on staff?
Are they relying on the ship operators themselves to make these calls? Hopefully they're employing a company like ourselves to deliver the expertise. We're here 24 7. There's a ton of free information available on the web, which anybody can access, but, you know, a lot of it's information overload. And do they know how to process all this? You know, we also can help deliver it and tailor it to their needs to help them make a decision better. So I'm not 100% sure what the operators are utilizing for that they should be my opinion focusing more on the logistics and scheduling and stuff on shoreside and, and leaving it to the experts. Hopefully they have some meteorologists on staff.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. I mean perhaps you can answer this. Perhaps this is slightly more your scope of things. How have things changed within the last decade technology wise? I mean you just mentioned some advancements that they're using at the moment. But are things in general, do you think becoming easier to mitigate? I mean as the weather's becoming, I think in general more extreme, we're seeing more extre weather events. So do you think these are becoming easier to mitigate or do you think that the sheer number of weather events is kind of overwhelming the system?
[00:13:08] Speaker B: I think it's overwhelming but you also have to remember that it's so much more readily available to hear about it and see about it. I feel like at least for the shipping company, predictive analytics like we mentioned with El Nino, what do we typically see in an El Nino year for them to prepare ahead of time where it could be drier or wetter than normal. Do we have to change, change change trade routes, get the goods someplace else because there may be a drought here and they're not. It's going to be, you know, too expensive, that type of thing. We have the ability and tools for that now. And I think the infrastructure might be a little bit better in the ports as well.
Being able to more handle it, being a little bit more proactive than reactive, especially like port closures and whatnot, getting ahead of it before it's too late to kick a vessel out, letting them know they're to supposed that we're likely going to close the port and get ahead of it.
[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's definitely some good advice.
So to summarize, I mean what is in your opinion the main thing that shipping companies should be paying the closest attention to?
[00:14:09] Speaker B: I would say I'm going to come back to that free information available. I notice that it's overwhelming but I think it's a very useful tool for operators. There's tropical seasonal forecast. We issue them here what we think our outlooks outlook is. The National Hurricane center does that as well. And then there's more short term outlooks, a week, a few days that could be a huge help in making preparations. These are widely available. Don't wait if you're employing along a trade route and there's some potential for tropical development, you know, sign up for weather services. I can't tell you how many times we get, you know, a message from, from a shipping company, hey, can you help my ship? He's underway. He's dealing with a tropical system, and can you avoid it and keep him safe? And. And to be honest, sometimes he's already in it, you know, and your best options would have been available two days prior to that. And now you're looking at more time at sea, the risk of safety to the vessel, and, you know, you can minimize some time loss. I mean, planning is key that. I couldn't tell you how many times we deal with that, you know, for a nominal cost to, you know, have that peace of mind and to be better prepared.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Right. So information, planning and being proactive. Matt, thank you so much for joining me. I've really, really appreciated all the insight that you've given us today.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Charlotte. It's been a pleasure.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: So that is all we have time for on today's episode. A huge thank you to Matt and the team at Polestar for helping with this episode. Thought it was really, really interesting to learn the details of what El Nino means. I mean, as I mentioned last episode, I'm very, very hot at the moment. So we will be back next week with a normal episode of News In Brief. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're watching on YouTube, please, like, share, subscribe. Thank you very much and we will see you next time.
