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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 happens during an El Niño?
During an El Niño event, the surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become significantly warmer than usual. It also reduces the upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich waters from the deep—shutting down or reversing ocean currents along the equator and along the west coast of South and Central America.
What is the best definition of El Niño?
El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. When capitalized, El Niño means the Christ Child, and was used because the phenomenon often arrived around Christmas.
Why is it called El Niño?
Fishermen off the west coast of South America were the first to notice appearances of unusually warm water that occurred at year’s end. The phenomenon became known as El Niño because of its tendency to occur around Christmas time. El Niño is Spanish for “the boy child” and is named after the baby Jesus.
Are we in La Niña or El Niño?
La Niña conditions have officially developed and are expected to remain in place through the entirety of winter 2021-2022. La Niña means we’re in the negative phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short.
Is El Niño a storm?
An El Niño in the Pacific Ocean affects weather patterns all over the world. One effect is that El Niño causes wind conditions in the upper atmosphere that slow down developing storms in the Atlantic Ocean. In El Niño conditions, the trade winds are weak or may even blow in the opposite direction from normal.
What does El Nino mean in Spanish?
El Nino, means ‘little boy’ in Spanish. It is a weather system which re-emerges after a gap of about two to five years in the Pacific Ocean and its effects last for about 12 months on an average.
Why is it called El Nino?
Answer: The Spanish name El Nino (literally, “the son”) was coined by the fishermen of Ecuador and Peru to denote the warming of the coastal surface waters that often occurs in that area around Christmastime.
What causes El Nino phenomenon?
El Nino is essentially caused by the interaction between the surface layers of the tropical Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere over it. The water is warmer due to the trade winds reversing direction or becoming less intense.
What happens during an El Nino?
During El Nino, rainfall and thunderstorm activity diminishes over the western equatorial Pacific, and increases over the eastern half of the tropical Pacific. This area of increased rainfall occurs where the exceptionally warm ocean waters have reached about 28°C or 82°F.