What is El Nino and why is it important?
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What is El Niño and why is it important?
El Niño causes the Pacific jet stream to move south and spread further east. During winter, this leads to wetter conditions than usual in the Southern U.S. and warmer and drier conditions in the North. El Niño also has a strong effect on marine life off the Pacific coast.
How long does El Niño last?
9-12 months
How long do El Niño and La Niña typically last? El Niño and La Niña episodes typically last 9-12 months. They both tend to develop during the spring (March-June), reach peak intensity during the late autumn or winter (November-February), and then weaken during the spring or early summer (March-June).
What is El Niño caused by?
El Niño occurs when warm water builds up along the equator in the eastern Pacific. The warm ocean surface warms the atmosphere, which allows moisture-rich air to rise and develop into rainstorms. The clearest example of El Niño in this series of images is 1997.
Is El Niño dry or wet?
Weather typically differs markedly from north to south during an El Niño event (wet in south, dry in north) but also usually varies greatly within one region from event to event.
Is El Niño positive or negative?
Ecosystems and human communities can be positively or negatively affected. For example, in the Southern United States, during the fall through spring, El Niño usually causes increased rainfall and sometimes destructive flooding.
How often does El Niño happen?
every 3 to 5 years
An El Niño condition occurs when surface water in the equatorial Pacific becomes warmer than average and east winds blow weaker than normal. The opposite condition is called La Niña. During this phase of ENSO, the water is cooler than normal and the east winds are stronger. El Niños typically occur every 3 to 5 years.
Is El Niño wet or dry?
When did El Niño start?
Around 1525, when Francisco Pizarro made landfall in Peru, he noted rainfall in the deserts, the first written record of the impacts of El Niño.
When’s the next El Niño year?
An El Nino is currently more likely in late 2022 and especially during the next winter season than an extended La Nina.
Does El Niño cause more rain?
The Short Answer: El Niño is a weather pattern that occurs in the Pacific Ocean. During this time, unusual winds cause warm surface water from the equator to move east, toward Central and South America. El Niño can cause more rain than usual in South and Central America and in the United States.
How was El Niño named?
Fishermen off the west coast of South America were the first to notice appearances of unusually warm water that occurred at year’s end. The phenomenon became known as El Niño because of its tendency to occur around Christmas time. El Niño is Spanish for “the boy child” and is named after the baby Jesus.
How often does El Niño occur?
Is El Niño warm or cold?
El Nino is the “warm phase” of a larger phenomenon called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). La Nina, the “cool phase” of ENSO, is a pattern that describes the unusual cooling of the region’s surface waters.
When was the first El Niño?
The timing and intensity of El Niño events vary widely. The first recorded occurrence of unusual desert rainfall was in 1525, when the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro landed in northern Peru.
Who discovered El Niño?
Two giants of 20th-century meteorology, Gilbert Walker and Jacob Bjerknes, are usually given credit for discovering the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon.
Who named El Niño?
An early recorded mention of the term “El Niño” to refer to climate occurred in 1892, when Captain Camilo Carrillo told the geographical society congress in Lima that Peruvian sailors named the warm south-flowing current “El Niño” because it was most noticeable around Christmas.
When was El Niño first discovered?
In 1877, the Chilean Benjamín Vicuña MacKenna immediately recognized the link between climate anomalies all over the Pacific basin–because they corresponded with a powerful tsunami. During the early 1890s, two Peruvian scientists used “rustic astronomy” to interpret anomalies along the arid Peruvian coast.
