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What is El-Nino?

It is necessary to understand the normal position and El Nino position. El Nino is a Spanish word meaning of which is “ A Christ boy has born”.

Eastern area of Pacific Ocean (Off Peru and Ecuador coast) is area of fishing industry. Here big ships of countries come for fishing, since all types of fish are available here in big amount.

Below it is explained in details how the El Nino event is triggered. We will discuss about El Nino in Pacific Ocean.

  1. Normal Position
  2. El Nino Position
  3. It’s Effects
  4. Video Explaining El Nino

 

Normal EL-Nino Conditions
1) Easterly Winds & Drifting of Warm Water
In normal condition easterlies wind (wind flowing from east to west) prevail near equator over the Ocean. Reason for this easterlies is earth rotation from west to east. Due to this easterlies, warm water on the surface of the Ocean drift towards west. This warm water pile up at the west Pacific near Indonesia.

2) Warm pool on East and Cold Pool on West Pacific
In the east Pacific Ocean cold and nutrient water come up from the deep sea and occupy the place of drifted water. As this water is cold and nutrient fish live here in abundant. On the other hand, because of warm water, convective activity take place over west Pacific area near Indonesia. This is a normal position in Pacific Ocean.

 

ElNino Conditions:

Below diagram shows the mechanism of Elnino condition:

(click here for enlarged image)

After every two to five years piled water at west Pacific get disturbed. Because it could not pile up further as a basic nature of liquid. So a block of warm water starts flowing towards east.

As per Plank theory the small amount of this block deflects towards right in southern hemisphere and towards left in northern hemisphere. But due to coriolis effect it again come to same block and the block remain as it is. (Shown in fig. above)

As the season advances the frequencies of such warm water block increase. This warm water block weaken the easterlies and after some days convert it in westerly. Convective activity shifts to central Pacific and further to east Pacific sea. This situation of Pacific is called El Nino.

 

Image source: worldnow.com

Effects of Elnino:

  1. Convective activity shift to east Pacific.
  2. Peru and Ecuador getting heavy rain.
  3. Due to warm water fish vanishes from east Pacific area.
  4. Fishing industry collapse during this period.
  5. The strongest El Nino occurred in 1982. In this year Indonesia suffered severe drought. Forest of Indonesia caught fire.

Video Explaining the El Nino event:

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