El Ninos recur every three to eight years, and it has been a few years since the last one. El Nino begins as a giant pool of warm water swelling in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, that sets off a chain reaction of weather events around the world – some devastating and some beneficial.
A strong El Nino is often associated with flooding rains and warm weather in Peru, drought in Indonesia, Africa, and Australia, torrential downpours and mudslides in southern California, a mild winter in the northeast, and fewer hurricanes in the southeast. Keep in mind that these effects aren't guaranteed, but an El Niño makes these conditions more likely to happen.
El Ninos occur irregularly approximately every two to seven years. Warm water generally appears off the coast of South America close to Christmas, and reaches its peak warmth in the eastern Pacific during the late fall of the following year. After peaking, the waters will tend to cool slowly through the winter and spring of the next year. Effects can be felt continually around the globe for more than a year, though this is generally not the case in any one place.
How to predict El Nino
In the tropical Pacific Ocean, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates a network of buoys that measure temperature, currents and winds in the equatorial band. The collected data are evaluated by complex computer models designed to predict an El Nino. Even these complex models, however, cannot predict the exact intensity or duration of an El Nino, nor can they predict how areas will be affected.
Predictions from meteorologists in Australia, Japan and the U.S. all recently increased their probability of an event this year, to as much as 70 percent. Aside from months of deluge in the U.S., the effects of an El Nino could include the warmest year on record, and then, if combined with further Arctic ice melt, a particularly cold winter in Europe.
When the strongest El Nino on record occurred in 1997-98, a 75-year-old Californian named Al Nino received angry phone calls demanding answers. If the rains come again this year, let’s hope people maintain better poise.
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