What is El Niño and How is It Happen?

El Niño is an abnormal climate in which the temperature of the surface of the Tropical Eastern Pacific Ocean in West Equador and Peru higher than its normal level. Fishermen who ply the waters of the Pacific off the coast of Peru and Ecuador have known for centuries about the El Niño. Every three to seven years during the months of December and January,

fish in the coastal waters off of these countries virtually vanish, causing the fishing business to come to a standstill. South American fishermen have given this phenomenon the name El Niño, which is Spanish for "the Boy Child," because it comes about the time of the celebration of the birth of the Christ Child.

        El Niño happens when weakening trade winds (which sometimes even reverse direction) allow the warmer water from the western Pacific to flow toward the east. This flattens out the sea level, builds up warm surface water off the coast of South America, and increases the temperature of the water in the eastern Pacific.

Sometimes, and for reasons not fully understood, the trade winds do not replenish, or even reverse direction to blow from west to east. When this happens, the ocean responds in a several ways. Warm surface waters from the large, warm pool east of Indonesia begin to move eastward. Moreover, the natural spring warming in the central Pacific is allowed to continue and also spread eastward through the summer and fall. Beneath the surface, the thermocline along the equator flattens as the warm waters at the surface effectively act as a 300-foot-deep cap preventing the colder, deeper waters from upwelling. As a result, the large central and eastern Pacific regions warm up (over a period of about 6 months) into an El Niño. On average, these waters warm by 3° to 5°F, but in some places the waters can peak at more than 10°F higher than normal (up from temperatures in the low 70s Fahrenheit, to the high 80s).

 

The deeper, warmer water in the east limits the amount of nutrient-rich deep water normally surfaced by the upwelling process. Since fish can no longer access this rich food source, many of them die off. This is why these conditions are called "El Niño", or "the Christ Child", which is what Peruvian fisherman call the particularly bad fishing period around December. More importantly, the different water temperatures tend to change the weather of the region.

What happens to the ocean also affects the atmosphere. Tropical thunderstorms are fueled by hot, humid air over the oceans. The hotter the air, the stronger and bigger the thunderstorms. As the Pacific's warmest water spreads eastward, the biggest thunderstorms move with it. If you look on a map, you will see that suddenly islands like Tahiti, normally tropical paradises, experience massive storms.

The clouds and rainstorms associated with warm ocean waters also shift toward the east. Thus, rains which normally would fall over the tropical rain forests of Indonesia start falling over the deserts of Peru, causing forest fires and drought in the western Pacific and flooding in South America. Moreover the Earth's atmosphere responds to the heating of El Niño by producing patterns of high and low pressure which can have a profound impact on weather far away from the equatorial Pacific. For instance, higher temperatures in western Canada and the upper plains of the United States, colder temperatures in the southern United States. The east coast of southern Africa often experiences drought during El Niño.

You also can watch this video to make you more understand.