El Ni ño and La Niña

1. El Niño and La Niña By: Allan Williams, Melissa Peddler, and Amanda Vasiladis

2. What is El Niño and La Niña? • El Niño is an abnormality in the tropical Pacific ocean currents. • The term El Niño refers to a warm, nutrient-poor, ocean current. • The ocean-atmospheric conditions are changed so that the ocean temperature is higher than usual. This creates a chain reaction that we will explain shortly. • La Niña is quite the opposite of El Niño. Instead of the ocean temperature heating up such as during an El Niño, the temperature becomes especially cool. • Although, both El Niño and La Niña are disruptions in the ocean-atmospheric weather system.

3. Where, when, and what time of year does El Niño occur? • El Niño usually appears around Christmas time and lasts for several months. • El Niño occurs during our winters and La Niña during our summers. • El Niño and La Niña occur every 3-7 years; on average every 4 years, but can wait up to ten years to return. • El Niño is most common to occur between the tropical and equatorial Pacific Ocean.

4. What causes El Niño? • When El Niño is in effect, the convection cell that normally forms around Indonesia and Australia moves east disrupting the weather system. • Jim Kinter, the executive director of the Center for Ocean-Land Atmospheric Studies states: “the huge amounts of heat released by the thunderstorms in convection cells affects the circulation of the global atmosphere, so when those thunderstorms are shifted from their normal position, the global circulation is also changed.”

5. What causes El Niño Part II? • The main cause of El Niño is the change in atmospheric pressure. As we have learned, differences in temperature and pressure move air and moisture throughout the sky. • Therefore, with this change in pressure, the normal placements of air and moisture in the sky are moved eastward. • To put it simply, El Niño is caused by the changed position of the pool of hot water and the convection cell it creates.

6. What areas does El Niño affect? What are the effects? • El Niño affects the weather around the globe. It directly affects most Pacific countries in South America such as Peru and Ecuador. • It is the cause of many brush fires in Australia. • El Niño it self can not create any damage, but itsproducts can. Products of El Niño are: increased and heavy rainfall across the southern tier of the United States and in Peru, destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific. • El Niño also affects the economy of Peru since it disturbs the placement of nutrients which attract fish for the fisherman to catch. • El Niño does affect our area by making our winters warmer and summers cooler • Ex: The El Niño of 1982-1983 killed nearly 2,000 lives and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes overall. Also, as a result of this event, there were more hurricances than usual that occurred near Hawaii and Tahiti.

7. Recent Occurrences • Listed here are the years in which El Niños have occurred: 1951, 1953, 1957-1958, 1965, 1969, 1972-1973, 1976, 1982-1983, 1986-1987, 1991-1992, 1994, and 1997. • It is suggested that the 1997 event could have surpassed (in destructiveness) the El Niño of 1982-1983, making it the strongest El Niño of the century!

8. Other Interesting Facts… • El Niño is Spanish for “the boy” or “the Christ Child.” • It took its name from the time of year that it occurred – around Christmas time, thus it was dubbed “the Christ Child” and later on “the boy.” • La Niña is Spanish for “the girl.” • La Niña is also referred to as El Viejo translated as “the old man.” • The term El Niño was originally used by fisherman along the coast of Ecuador and Peru used in reference to a warm ocean current that made the fish less abundant at the time. • The realization of the connection between El Niño and global weather patterns did not occur until the winter of 1972-1973!

9. The End Thank you… (Applause)