Earth, wind, fire and rain: El Nino flings

weather effects across planet

By Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff on 12.07.15
Word Count 957

Vendors protect themselves and their merchandise from a sudden downpour in Manila, Philippines, in 2010. At the time,
the rain was a great relief to farmers suffering from an El Nino-triggered drought in that country. Photo: AP/Pat Roque

A fog of thick smoke settles over the Indonesian countryside, sickening hundreds of
thousands of people. The fog has triggered an environmental crisis.
In Peru, of cials cancel plans to host a famous car race, the Dakar Rally. Instead, they
prepare for torrential rains and devastating oods.
And in Ethiopia, crops die for lack of seasonal rain. The United Nations warns that a famine
is coming.
Many Californians hope a Godzilla El Nino will bring rains this winter to end the long
drought through which they've suffered. However, the idea of this mysterious climate
phenomenon creates fear in much of the world.
Its wide-ranging effects are so great that some researchers argue it doubles the risk of war
in much of the developing world.

Negatives Outweigh The Positives

Some people like to say it has positive aspects, but generally speaking its doom and
gloom, said El Nino researcher Michael Mickey Glantz, director of the Consortium for
Capacity Building at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Periodic warming of the Paci c Ocean has occurred for thousands of years. Only in recent
times have scientists come to appreciate its global reach, or even recognize its telltale
signs.
El Ninos effects are like placing a large stone in a shallow river, according to David Pierce,
a climate researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. It causes ripples that run
far downstream, he said.
Storms get their energy from warm ocean water, and normally, the hottest ocean surface
temperatures on the planet are found in the western Paci c, near Indonesia. During an El
Nino, however, these warm, rain-generating waters slide east, creating conditions for large
storms.

El Nino Can Hold Sway Over Rain, Wind

This can also change the path of powerful jet stream currents high above the Earth. These
high winds throw seasonal weather patterns into serious disorder.
Seasonal rains can fail to arrive in parts of India, Africa and Southeast Asia, killing crops
and stirring up wild res. In parts of North and South America, a series of pounding storms
can roll over the landscape, as though on a conveyor belt.
In Southern California, El Nino is best known for traf c-halting downpours and over owing
rivers. However, El Ninos ability to steer rain away from agricultural elds has earned it an
evil reputation.
A series of disastrous famines killed more than 30 million people in India and China in the
late 1800s. This is what rst made researchers aware of the weather phenomenon we now
call El Nino.
In the early 1900s, British mathematician Sir Gilbert Walker asked his staff in India to
gather weather data for him to analyze. He correlated recurring monsoon failures and
drought to seesawing atmospheric pressure in the eastern and western Paci c.

Never Been Better Prepared, U.N. Says

Today, U.N. of cials say the world is better prepared than ever to deal with the
consequences of El Nino. They warn, however, that 11 million children are at risk from
hunger, disease and lack of water in eastern and southern Africa alone.

Its the intense drought that causes the greatest human casualties and crop devastation,
said historian Mike Davis, author of Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the
Making of the Third World.
Drought causes other dangers as well. In Indonesia, slash-and-burn clearing of
agricultural land has given rise to wildly spreading forest res. These massive res, which
have occurred during every El Nino since 1982, have sickened hundreds of thousands of
people and killed 19 already this year.
The smoke, which has spread to Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand, has
also released enormous quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, according to
researchers.
Drought and ooding triggered by El Nino can have other health effects. Outbreaks of
cholera, typhoid and other diarrheal diseases spread in areas where oodwaters have
been contaminated by human or animal waste, health experts say.

Warming Waters And The Ripple Effects

El Ninos damaging effects are not con ned to land.
Warming Paci c waters can generate an increase in hurricanes. El Nino was cited as a
possible factor in the creation of Hurricane Patricia, one of the strongest hurricanes ever
recorded.
Warm water is kind of rocket fuel for those hurricanes, said Josh Willis, a climatologist at
NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Similarly, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cited the
warming effects of El Nino as a factor in a recently declared global coral bleaching event.
Temperature change is one of several factors that can cause coral reefs to release their
coating of algae, a plantlike life form that grows mostly in water, and often lives on coral.
Without the algae the coral needs for food, the coral reefs whiten and can become sick
and die.

Named For Its Arrival Around Christmas

El Ninos effect on sheries gave it its name. Before it was understood to be a global event,
shermen in Peru and Ecuador used the term to describe the warm currents that
sometimes arrived around Christmas and seemed to drive sh away. El Nino, Spanish for
the child, was a reference to the birth of Christ.
Normally, trade winds that blow from east to west cause an upwelling in the ocean, along
the coast of South America. Deep, cold, nutrient-rich water in lower parts of the ocean
moves toward the surface. This cool water sustains sh like anchovies, which are used
internationally to feed livestock. During El Nino, however, the trade winds slow, or collapse
entirely, putting an end to the upwelling and the anchovy sheries.

Glantz said that this not only affects the Peruvian anglers but also sends shock waves
through the commodities market as the price for soybeans another source of livestock
feed rises.
It kind of starts a chain reaction around the globe, Glantz said.