I don't get the El Nino? Can someone explain it in easy language?

Question

So i've looked everywhere but i don't understand what an El Nino is or how it works. I know its the cause of drought but how does it work related to Australia???

Answer 1

It is a pattern of warm tropical air that moves and where it moves it causes massive floods and a resultant drought in adjacent areas.    It is a very large scale event.  

From the site listed below is more information regarding El Ninos and LaNinas.

Answer 2

El Nino is simply an event where the water temperature over the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean turns warmer than normal.  This in turn has an effect of enhancing rainfall in this area while further to the west, over the western Pacific Ocean, rainfall is diminished due to enhanced sinking air over that area.

You can go here for a somewhat technical tutorial on El Nino/La Nina: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/an...

Answer 3

El Nino is a periodical reversal of Pacific ocean currents.In a normal year,currents flow west,driven by the trade winds.In an El Nino year,the trade winds fail(due to some reason) and warm water drifts back east wards towards Peru.El Nino(meaning 'The christ child') events begin in December or Januaary and hence its name.Thus the surface waters of the tropical eastern Pacific ocean becomes warmer than normal increasing the rainfall activity over there whereas there is diminished rainfall activity in the western tropical Pacific ocean.Thus northern parts of Australia is affected as more than normal dry condition prevails there.Not only this,weather and climate in most of the countries over the globe are affected by this phenomenon.Particularly,the distribution of rainfall is affected causing floods in some countries and drought conditions in some other countries.

Answer 4

big storm because of warm air currents migrateing everu few years

Answer 5

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO; commonly referred to as simply El Niño) is a global coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon. The Pacific ocean signatures, El Niño and La Niña are important temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean. The name El Niño, from the Spanish for "the little boy", refers to the Christ child, because the phenomenon is usually noticed around Christmas time in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America.[1] La Niña, similarly, means "the little girl". Their effect on climate in the southern hemisphere is profound. These effects were first described in 1923 by Sir Gilbert Thomas Walker from whom the Walker circulation, an important aspect of the Pacific ENSO phenomenon, takes its name. The atmospheric signature, the Southern Oscillation (SO) reflects the monthly or seasonal fluctuations in the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin, Australia. The most recent occurrence of El Niño started in September 2006[2] and lasted until early 2007.[3]. From June 2007 on, data indicated a weak La Niña event, strengthening in early 2008.

ENSO is a set of specific interacting parts of a single global system of coupled ocean-atmosphere climate fluctuations that come about as a consequence of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. The irregularity of ENSO makes predicting it of high interest, as it is demonstrably connected to seasonal, even yearly, regional climatic effects on large areas. ENSO is the most prominent known source of inter-annual variability in weather and climate around the world (about 3 to 8 years), though not all areas are affected. ENSO has signatures in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. El Niño changes the distribution of rainfall, causing floods in some areas and drought in others.

During major warm events, El Niño warming extends over much of the tropical Pacific and becomes clearly linked to the intensity of the Southern Oscillation. While ENSO effects are basically in phase between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, ENSO effects in the Atlantic Ocean lag behind those in the Pacific by 12 to 18 months. Many of the countries most affected by ENSO are developing countries that are largely dependent upon their agricultural and fishery sectors for food supply, employment, and foreign exchange.

New capabilities to predict the onset of ENSO events can have global socio-economic impacts. While ENSO is a natural part of the Earth's climate, an important concern is whether its intensity or frequency may change as a result of global warming. Low-frequency variability has been evidenced; inter-decadal modulation of ENSO (from PDO or IPO) might exist. This could explain the so-called protracted ENSO of the early 1990s.