El Nino is a Pacific Ocean current that causes freak weather occurrence around the world. Scientists have noticed that every five to seven years, prevailing winds in the Pacific occasionally change direction, driving warm water east towards South America. This tends to start in January during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. The effect has been known to occur for centuries, but it is only since the 1970s that scientists have understood El Nino and the way that it upsets the world’s climate.
El Niño is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, as opposed to La Niña, which is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. El Niño is an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific having important consequences for weather around the globe.
Among these consequences are increased rainfall across the southern tier of the US and in Peru, which has caused destructive flooding, and drought in the West Pacific, sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia. Observations of conditions in the tropical Pacific are considered essential for the prediction of short term (a few months to 1 year) climate variations.
To provide necessary data, NOAA operates a network of buoys which measure temperature, currents and winds in the equatorial band. These buoys daily transmit data which are available to researchers and forecasters around the world in real time.
NOTE: Two of the largest El Niño events on record occurred in 1982-1983 and in 1997-1998.
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