Table of Contents
Does El Niño affect global warming?
“The strongest events may also become even stronger than they are today.” In a warming climate, rainfall extremes are projected to shift eastward along the equator in the Pacific Ocean during El Niño events and westward during extreme La Niña events.
How does an El Niño event contribute to global warming?
Although El Niño’s strongest impacts are felt around the equatorial Pacific, they can affect weather around the world by influencing high and low pressure systems, winds and precipitation. And as the warmer ocean waters release excess energy (heat) into the atmosphere, global temperatures rise.
What climate change occurs during El Niño?
During an El Niño event, the surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become significantly warmer than usual. That change is intimately tied to the atmosphere and to the winds blowing over the vast Pacific.
How the occurrence of El Niño events affect global climate?
During an El Niño, warm waters and rainfall move east towards the Galapagos and bring copious amounts of rain and mudslides to the Americas while causing droughts in the west, over Australia and Indonesia. Floods, droughts and other extremes also occur over many other regions of the globe.
How the occurrence of El Niño events affects global climate?
What causes El Niño and La Niña phenomena?
Why do El Niño and La Niña occur? El Niño and La Niña result from interaction between the surface of the ocean and the atmosphere in the tropical Pacific. Changes in the ocean impact the atmosphere and climate patterns around the globe. In turn, changes in the atmosphere impact the ocean temperatures and currents.
Where do El Niño and La Niña occur?
El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific Ocean that swings back and forth every 3-7 years on average. Together, they are called ENSO (pronounced “en-so”), which is short for El Niño-Southern Oscillation.