Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Global warming forced scientists to change the way they look at El Niño
El Niño, meaning “the little boy” in Spanish, and La Niña, “the little
girl”, are two opposing climate patterns that break these normal conditions. El
Niño occurs when the normal east-to-west trade winds that push warm water
toward Asia weaken or reverse, and warm surface water from the western Pacific
moves eastward towards South America. This prevents cold water from rising to
the surface, upwelling, near South America, making the central and eastern
Pacific become much warmer, and changing rainfall patterns and influencing
global weather. When the trade winds strengthen, the opposite phenomenon
occurs, La Niña. El Niño and La Niña events occur every two to seven years but not
regularly, and they last nine to 12 months, sometimes for years. In the last
three decades, these phenomena have been detected by comparing the ocean temperature
in a specific part of the tropical Pacific. But as global warming has raised the
temperatures of the whole tropical Pacific, the anomalies have become harder to
see. Now, scientists subtract the temperature anomalies in the rest of the
tropical Pacific from those in the region most important for El Niño. This
update is just like replacing the old glasses with newly prescribed ones. With
upgraded glasses, scientists can now see the changes in ocean temperatures earlier
and better, and forecast long-range weather more accurately.
Read the article and learn about another influence of global warming.
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