Manila: The Philippines is bracing for a long and dry spell after expects forecast that the El Niño weather phenomenon would make its presence felt across the country this year.

In an interview aired by the government-run dzRB radio station, Presidential Communications secretary Herminio Coloma said the government was putting in place contingency plans to mitigate the results of the weather phenomenon.

El Niño, which is Spanish for ‘little boy’, is characterised by unusually warm ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific regions.

The phenomenon results in lengthy dry spells and disrupts the normal wet and dry season weather patterns.

In the case of the Philippines, the summer season is from March to May. However, during El Niño, the dry season could extend up to the last weeks of June.

In an a country where the planting and harvest of crops is closely observed on the basis of chronological patterns, any disruptions in these timings could have disastrous consequences.

Making matters worse is the fact that most farmers subsist from harvest to harvest with hardly any government assistance in the way of credit if their planting and harvest timings are disrupted.

Coloma, however, said the Philippines could mitigate these disruptions in agricultural patterns courtesy of the Climate Change Fund, with several billion pesos in funds, which is being readied for such contingencies.

“The national government has a contingency plan in place to address the changing climate which is the current reality,” Coloma said.

Coloma said that for example, one of the pillars of the 10-year Philippine Development Plan is climate change adaptation and mitigation and this includes government’s response on El Niño and La Niña.

La Niña is a weather phenomenon whose effects are a reversal of those exhibited by El Niño. La Niña is characterised by an abnormally long wet season which often results in massive flooding.

According to the Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), it has been closely monitoring the oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific regions that could lead to possible development of an El Niño.

“Pagasa has already noted a significant increase in the SSTA [sea surface temperature anomaly] from 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius from April 21 to April 28, 2014. Because of this development and as climate models predict that this condition may persist for the next nine months, Pagasa is foreseeing the onset of El Niño in June which may peak during the last quarter of 2014 and may last up to the first quarter of 2015,” the weather bureau said.

Experts said that abrupt changes in the weather patterns have cost billions of dollars for the Philippines, as well as loss of lives and property.