In recent decades here along the West Coast we have become very familiar with the weather phenomena know as El Nino. Its a departure from our "normal" weather patterns lasting a year or more.
El Nino Was Unusually Active in Possible Link to Climate Change
By Rudy Ruitenberg
Researchers studied 2,222 tree-ring records as proxies for temperature and rainfall over the past 700 years, the university wrote in an online statement dated yesterday. The records indicate the El Nino-Southern Oscillation weather phenomenon has been increasingly active in recent decades relative to the past seven centuries.
The drought associated with El Nino’s warm phase can cause smaller rice crops in Asia and cut wheat production in Australia, while the rains can cause flooding in South America and weaker cold ocean currents reduce anchovy catches off Peru. Accurately forecasting El Nino is challenging because it varies naturally over decades and centuries, the university said.
“If this trend of increasing ENSO activity continues, we expect to see more weather extremes such as floods and droughts,” Shang-Ping Xie, a meteorology professor at the University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center and study co-author, was cited as saying in the statement.
NOAA discribes El Nino as
"a disruption of the ocean-atmosphere system in the Tropical Pacific having important consequences for weather and climate around the globe."
There have been 26 El Nino years since 1900
1902-1903
1905-1906
1911-1912
1914-1915
1918-1919
1923-1924
1925-1926
1930-1931
1932-1933
1939-1940
1941-1942
1951-1952
1953-1954
1957-1958
1965-1966
1969-1970
1972-1973
1976-1977
1982-1983
1986-1987
1991-1992
1994-1995
1997-1998
2002-2003
2006-2007
2009-2010
Climate Change is something we've been experiencing for some time now, and one of its more notable characteristics may be El Ninos.