Effects of El Nino
March 2, 2011 | Nature
The Spanish translation of El Nino is literally “the Christ Child”, and was a term used by South American fishermen to refer to the warm currents of the Pacific Ocean at around Christmas time.
Today the term El Nino is still used to refer to the cyclic period of every 3-6 years when large scale warming of the surface of the Pacific Ocean occurs. This warming commonly last for about 9 months, but can stretch out to 18 months occasionally, and can have major impact on the worlds weather patterns.
Because of the effect of El Nino on global weather, and not knowing exactly when the phenomenon would occur it became important to predict its appearance. Various seasonal forecasting methods along with climatic models were tried to forecast the appearance of El Nino. But realistic predictions could not be made until the 1980’s when computer models became available to correlate the massive amounts of data necessary for such predictions.
Effects of El Nino.
In recent times the worst effects of El Nino were experienced during the years 1982/83, and 1997/98. During 1982/83 heavy storms were regular in the southwestern states in the USA, and Australia recorded its worst periods of drought in the 20th century.
During the period 1997/98 the world’s surface temperature reached a record high of 62.5ºF, which was 0.8ºF above the average temperatures recorded for the 1960-1990 period, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), global land and ocean temperatures were even higher. Both these effects were attributable to El Nino.
Further effects of El Nino were experienced in other parts of the world during the 1997/98 warming period –
- Severe drought affecting many Western Pacific Islands, Central America, and Mexico.
- Extreme rainfall and mudslides in California.
- In Indonesia lack of rainfall lead to drought which in turn resulted in many uncontrollable forest fires.
- Shipping through the Panama Canal was restricted due to lower water levels caused by reduced rainfall in the region.
- Coastal waters close to Peru were so warm that the entire fishing season was totally non productive.
In the year 2010 new tools and techniques have been developed to carry out observation of the surface of the Pacific Ocean in real time. These include satellite observation systems, and many types of ocean buoys, all providing data on the state of the sea, upper ocean surface temperatures, and atmospheric conditions above the ocean for computer analyses.