People have noticed that when the Pacific Ocean is unusually warm near the beginning of the year, certain things are more likely to happen. Peruvian fishing boat crews know it's probably going to be a bad year for catching anchovies. Seventeen million seabirds on Kiritimati (Christmas) Island in the mid-Pacific may abandon their nests. Heavy rainfall may strike the normally arid coasts of Ecuador and Peru. Parts of Africa, Australia, and the central United States may suffer droughts. These events are linked to a Pacific Ocean phenomenon known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
How can such widespread phenomena in different parts of the globe be connected to the same event?
2007-01-20 03:25:14 · 3 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Weather
Yes you can point the finger at El Niño, but no, you can't blame our wild weather of the past few weeks on global warming like so many people are.
We're in an El Niño, which has absolutely nothing to do with global warming!
Every three to five years, for reasons still not completely understood, the waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean grow unusually warm.
These warm waters, stretching from the coast of Peru across thousands of square miles to the western Pacific, generate unusual weather patterns around the world, including above-average rain in the south, increased storminess in the West and fluctuations in temperatures.
Forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center believe our current El Niño, which formed in late summer and helped reduce the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin, is likely to continue through March and maybe as long as May.
That means more wacky weather!
2007-01-20 04:26:36 · answer #1 · answered by ♥Enya♥ 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The entire globe's weather is interactive and anything happening on one portion of the globe will effect other portions of the globe to some degree. We barely understand the surface of those interactions but know they are there. Trying to forecast or act on them is far beyond our current knowledge.
2007-01-20 11:34:16 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
People will blame ANYTHING and ANYONE but themselves!
You answered your own question.
So the next time you see someone blaming the weather on El Niño, you will know THEY are in denial!
2007-01-20 11:34:10 · answer #3 · answered by tattie_herbert 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋