El Niño, La Niña

Why does Australia and Indonesia sometimes face abrupt droughts and brush fires? Why does South America occasionally have a poor fishing industry? It’s all because of El Niño. So, what is this El Niño, you ask? Well, we learned in science class that El Niño is a warm current of water by the South American coast that occurs when easterly trade winds weaken.

Normally, easterly trade winds blow off the coast of South America, pushing warm surface water of the ocean toward the western Pacific Ocean near Australia and Indonesia. There, the warm water evaporates and causes clouds to form, resulting in a rainy season for that part of the world. Meanwhile, the eastern coast of South America gets a nutrition-rich upwelling of cold water since cold water always replaces warm water. Fish follow this kind of cold water, so western South America is known to have abundant fish to catch.

However, everything changes when El Niño occurs. The easterly trade winds weaken, causing the warm water to come back to the South American coast. This warm water does not allow cold water to replace it, causing no fish to populate the shores of this country. Moreover, heavy rainfall pounds on South America. In turn, Indonesia and Australia experience droughts and brush fires since no warm water is present to form clouds over that land.

After El Niño, La Niña sometimes creates vicissitudes in the environment. Because the cold water stays blocked by the warm current beside South America, the cold water culminates and engulfs the coast of the country as soon as the easterly trade winds pick up again. The Web site researched for this post explained that La Niñas create weather climates opposite to the ones El Niños bring upon the tropical regions of the Pacific. In other words, El Niño produces droughts over Indonesia and Australia while La Niña makes that part of the world wetter than usual. In addition, the Web site states that El Niños and La Niñas occur every three to five years. Furthermore, La Niñas take place only half the number of times El Niños occur.

In my opinion, it would be lucky for Australia, Indonesia, and South America if La Niña follows El Niño. After all those droughts and fires, the eastern Pacific would probably jump for joy with the superfluous rain replenishing their land. In addition, the extra cold water on the South American coast would probably attract much more fish to cause a booming fishing industry.

As you can see, El Niños and La Niñas affect the weather effortlessly. They not only rule the climate of the Pacific, but also affect the United States (tornadoes in Florida and floods in the West). These sudden currents easily change the state of global climate, only to show how unpredictable weather can be.

Visit this Web site to get any doubts about El Niño and La Niño cleared:

http://www.elnino.noaa.gov/lanina_new_faq.html

The picture was found on: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/fgz/science/elnino.php?wfo=fgz