Context:

  • According to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) the year 2023 was the warmest-on-record year and the warming El Nino event is to make fuel the heat in 2024.

El-Nino and its ompacts:

  • El Niñois basically a climate pattern which describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
  • El Niño is the “warm phase” of a larger phenomenonwhich is called as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
  • La Niña also known as the “cool phase” of ENSO, is a pattern which describes the unusual cooling of the region’s surface waters.
  • El Niño and La Niñaboth are considered the ocean part of ENSO while the Southern Oscillation is its atmospheric changes
  • El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean.
  • La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific Ocean.
  • El Niño is an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific which is having important consequences for weather around the globe.
  • El Niño has an impact on the temperatures of the oceans around the world, the speed and strength of ocean currents, the health of coastalfisheries, and local weather from Australia to South America and much beyond.
  • El Niño event generally occur irregularly at two- to seven-year intervals.
  • During El Niño event the trade winds relax in the central and western Pacific which leads to a flattening of the thermocline due to a depression of the thermocline in the eastern Pacific, and an elevation of the thermocline in the west.
  • Rainfall follows the warm water eastward, with associated flooding in Peru and drought in Indonesia and also in Australia.
  • The eastward displacement of the atmospheric heat source overlaying the warmest water results in large changes in the global atmospheric circulation and this in turn forces changes in weather in regions far removed from the tropical Pacific.