Understanding El Niño
It was Peruvian fishermen, hundreds of years ago, who first noticed the unusually warm ocean currents that would appear in some years near South America, disrupting their fisheries and triggering heavy rainfall across the lands. In a normal year, trade winds blow relentlessly from east to west, pushing warm seawater and moisture-rich winds toward the west side of the Pacific, and cooling the eastern Pacific. Ironically, the weaker trade winds prevent warm water near South America from spreading westward, and the warm water near South America keeps the trade winds weaker, setting up a self-re-enforcing pattern that lasts up to a year. Moisture-laden clouds, fuelled by the rising air over warm waters in the eastern Pacific, become a source of rainfall for weather system over parts of South America.
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