Warming, which is a global climatic phenomenon, responsible for flood and drought in various parts of the globe, moves and gains strength.

Experts “called into question all meteorological models developed over the last ten years”.

El Niño, one of the most impressive natural phenomena that affect our planet, is also changing appearance, perhaps due to changes in climate. It was discovered that NASA has been monitoring its appearances with environmental satellites, the last of which ended in early 2010.

El Niño, also known by the acronym ENSO, El Niño-Southern Oscillation, is a periodic climatic phenomenon that occurs in the Pacific Ocean on average every five years. It usually causes a warming of Pacific Ocean currents and of Central and Eastern Europe and simultaneously, changes in atmospheric pressure in the Western and Central Pacific. The phenomenon often results in flooding, especially along the western areas of South America because of the heavy rains that the phenomenon carries with it, as well as droughts in Australia and neighbouring areas.

The main element that made El Niño different in recent years compared to decades ago was the fact that its warmer waters have moved into the heart of the Pacific Ocean, rather than east. This could have important implications in long-term climatic impact, not only on the areas surrounding the largest ocean on Earth, but on the entire planet.

Tong Lee of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said:

Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures.

This should explain why in recent years along the tropical Pacific Ocean there has been an increase in the temperature of surface water and this is particularly evident after the passage of an El Niño event.

It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions.

–Tong Lee.

In other words, the increasing ocean heat is due to El Niño and other global warming, but what makes El Niño so powerful in the heart of the ocean is the increase in global temperature.

If this trend continues in the near future, according to researchers, it will change the climate projections for coming years, since they were created in the Nineties, taking into account that El Niño would have remained where it was during previous decades.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory – NASA/NOAA Study Finds El Niños are Growing Stronger

rice cultivation in the Philippines – photo by jonicdao (source: Flickr Creative Commons)

Typhoons in October devastated agriculture and caused heavy damages to infrastructure in the Philippines. Now a drought is destroying crops and threatening electricity supplies in the Southeast Asian nation, the New York Times reports.

Nearly 400,000 acres of farmland have already been affected, and agriculture officials expect the drought to continue, perhaps until July.

–New York Times

The government of the Philippines is responding with monetary aid to farmers and fishermen; water rationing, drilling wells and even cloud-seeding.

An AFP article credits the weather phenomenon of El Niño as the cause of the drought in the Philippines:

El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, and has caused droughts in the Philippines before.

The government is also encouraging farmers to switch from growing rice to the cultivation of less water intensive crops like fruits and vegetables.

by Graham Land