What causes El Niño?
El Niño occurs when warm water builds up along the equator in the eastern Pacific. The warm ocean surface warms the atmosphere, which allows moisture-rich air to rise and develop into rainstorms. The clearest example of El Niño in this series of images is 1997.
What is El Niño Wikipedia?
An El Niño is associated with warm and very wet weather months in April–October along the coasts of northern Peru and Ecuador, causing major flooding whenever the event is strong or extreme.
What is El Niño in simple terms?
The term El Niño (Spanish for 'the Christ Child') refers to a warming of the ocean surface, or above-average sea surface temperatures, in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
What is El Niño La Nina Wikipedia?
La Niña (/lə ˈnin. jə/; Spanish: [la ˈniɲa]) is an oceanic and atmospheric phenomenon that is the colder counterpart of El Niño, as part of the broader El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern. The name La Niña originates from Spanish for "the girl", by analogy to El Niño, meaning "the boy".
Why is El Niño important?
El Niño causes the Pacific jet stream to move south and spread further east. During winter, this leads to wetter conditions than usual in the Southern U.S. and warmer and drier conditions in the North. El Niño also has a strong effect on marine life off the Pacific coast.
Is El Niño warm or cold?
El Nino is the “warm phase” of a larger phenomenon called the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). La Nina, the “cool phase” of ENSO, is a pattern that describes the unusual cooling of the region's surface waters.
How El Niño affects climate?
El Niño is the periodic warming of water in the Pacific Ocean every few years. When it occurs, it means more energy is available for storms to form there. El Niño also affects wind shear, which is when air currents at a lower altitude blow in a different direction from winds higher in the atmosphere.
What are 2 effects of El Niño?
Severe drought and associated food insecurity, flooding, rains, and temperature rises due to El Niño are causing a wide range of health problems, including disease outbreaks, malnutrition, heat stress and respiratory diseases.
What is El Niño best definition?
Definition of El Niño : an irregularly recurring flow of unusually warm surface waters from the Pacific Ocean toward and along the western coast of South America that prevents upwelling of nutrient-rich cold deep water and that disrupts typical regional and global weather patterns — compare la niña.
What is the difference between El Nino and La Nina?
El Niño refers to the above-average sea-surface temperatures that periodically develop across the east-central equatorial Pacific. It represents the warm phase of the ENSO cycle. La Niña refers to the periodic cooling of sea-surface temperatures across the east-central equatorial Pacific.
Is El Niño wet or dry?
Weather typically differs markedly from north to south during an El Niño event (wet in south, dry in north) but also usually varies greatly within one region from event to event.
Where does El Niño occur?
El Niño is a weather pattern that occurs in the Pacific Ocean. During this time, unusual winds cause warm surface water from the equator to move east, toward Central and South America. El Niño can cause more rain than usual in South and Central America and in the United States.