El Nino

& # 8211 ; Persuasive Letter Essay, Research Paper

El Ni O, it was learned, is every bit much an atmospheric event as an pelagic 1. The air currents and the Waterss communicate with each other halfway around the universe. ( Johnson )

In a normal twelvemonth, the trade air currents blow from South America to Asia, forcing warm H2O to the far reaches of the western equatorial Pacific. During an El Ni O, this pool of warm H2O sloshes across the Pacific to Peru as the normal air currents weaken. The warmer-than-normal H2O adds heat and wet to the air above it, making cumulonimbuss and a typical storm path with far-reaching effects. ( Johnson )

El Ni O is a mass of warm H2O now in the southern Pacific. It is holding a planetary impact on the conditions. The warm H2O increases the H2O vapour over the Pacific and the Earth s normal conditions form.

The consequence: heavy rains in the normally dry Southwest and fires in the drought-stricken rain woods of Malaysia. ( Jarvinen )

El Ni O is a seasonal ocean current that flows southerly along the seashore of northern Peru, it is frequently associated with atmospheric alterations. Scientists by and large refer to El Ni O and its related phenomena as the El Ni o-Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) . The current itself is warm, nutrient-poor, and comparatively low in salt. Its name ( Spanish, & # 8220 ; the kid & # 8221 ; ) is derived from its reaching during the Christmas season. This current is most good developed from January to March, and it normally penetrates merely a few grades south of the equator before meeting with the northward-flowing Peru Current. El Ni O is an extension of the eastward-flowing equatorial rip. It turns south along the seashore of Ecuador. Every four to five old ages, in an lone partly understood rhythm that appears to integrate a 2-year subcycle, a weakening of usually strong southeasterly trade air currents allows the El Ni o current to widen farther South. Water temperatures rise several grades above norm, with ruinous consequences.

( Katcher )

The higher temperature along the seashore kills planktonic beings and fish, therefore harming the major fishing industry in the country ; of import guano-producing birds starve or abandon their nests. The higher temperature besides causes increased vaporization, which in bend green goodss excessive rainfall on some land countries. A major ENSO perturbation affects other ocean-current forms and causes widespread climatic alterations over the Western Hemisphere and even Europe and Asia, every bit good as over the southern Pacific Ocean. Disastrous implosion therapy and drouths may ensue in some countries. Research workers have developed theoretical accounts of tropical ocean-atmosphere interactions that enable them to successfully foretell ENSO fluctuations and better prognosis climatic perturbations. ( Arbarbanel )

( Fullmer )

El Ni O is a periodic, weather-disrupting status in the tropical Pacific, in which westward-blowing trade air currents weaken, leting warm H2O to drive E to South America. ( Livezey )

El Ni O is a big pool of remarkably warm H2O that appears approximately every three to four old ages in the cardinal and eastern Pacific Ocean along the equator. ( Fullmer )

The abnormally warm H2O causes a large addition in rainfall in cardinal and southern South America, E Africa, and the cardinal and eastern tropical Pacific. El Ni o created drouth in Indonesia, Australia and the western tropical Pacific, Central America and the Caribbean. ( Fullmer )

Actually, the size of El Ni o doesn t alteration much from episode to episode but its strength does and that s what affairs. The strength affairs because if it is really strong, it has the possible to convey monolithic rainstorms that could do many inundations. It besides matters because it has the capableness to bring forth monolithic hurricanes. If the El Ni O is weak, so the effects are less and make non do as much harm. El Ni o s rhythm is really irregular. For case, there were a figure of really strong El Ni os between 1900 and 1920, a few in the early 1940s, and several per decennary from the late fiftiess to the present, but merely really weak 1s in the periods between. The last decennary and a half have been a peculiar active period for strong El Ni os. ( Weisser )

Way back in the 1500s, fishermen in Peru noticed that remarkably warm coastal currents reduced their anchovy landings. At the same clip, local husbandmans noticed the heating coincided with increased rainfall. Fantastic gardens sprung from bare waterless lands in some parts, and the old ages were called & # 8220 ; a os de abundancia & # 8221 ; & # 8211 ; old ages of copiousness in Spanish. In other parts, torrential rains brought ruin. ( Johnson )

The warming frequently peaked around Christmas so the current was nicknamed & # 8216 ; El Ni o & # 8217 ; & # 8211 ; the Christ kid in Spanish. The late eightiess fascinated a few scientists fascinated by the phenomenon. From the seamans logs and husbandmans & # 8217 ; farmer’s calendar, it was impossible to patch together the El Ni o narrative or even to specify a normal twelvemonth in rainfall and H2O temperature. It was impossible to patch together the El Ni O narratives because they did non compose down adequate information that was accurate, every clip El Ni O occurred. ( Johnson )

Peruvian fisherman foremost noticed it during Christmas over 200 old ages ago. El Ni O is a periodic and immense, phenomenon. This twelvemonth & # 8217 ; s is one and half times the size of the United States, has adequate H2O to make full the Great Lakes 30 times over and has 93 times the energy Americans extracted from fossil fuels in 1995. ( Wilson )

No 1 knows when the first El Ni O occurred, but ice-core records from the Andes in Peru suggest these clime fluctuations have been portion of Earth & # 8217 ; s weather rhythm for 1000s of old ages. Some scientists speculate the disorderly conditions forms began when glaciers stopped withdrawing and sea degrees stabilized some 5,000 old ages ago. Others believe they have identified El Ni o signatures 100s of 1000s of old ages old in coral growing rates. ( Johnson )

Indirectly, the warm current besides crashed the local guano industry, which sold the nutrient-packed sea bird dungs for fertiliser. Seabirds had either starved or migrated with the anchovies to colder fish-filled Waterss, go forthing the local stones guano-free. ( Johnson )

Interest in El Ni O rekindled in 1972-73, when a monster-sized heating event rolled across Peru, fall ining its anchovy piscary, so the largest in the universe. As the financial effects of a fishmeal deficit rippled around the Earth, the monetary value of protein options such as soya beans skyrocketed. Domestic fowl husbandmans in the United States passed their glide provender costs on to consumers, raising retail poulet monetary values 40 per centum. This was the sort of scientific discipline that interested Wall Street. ( Johnson )

Despite the advancement, Mother Nature played mayhem with scientists & # 8217 ; apprehension of the boisterous phenomenon in 1982, when a monster-sized El Ni o turn over across the Pacific with wildly unexpected effects. It was to day of the month the largest, most intense El Ni O in modern times. Farmers in Peru were up to their orbs in rain. Fires scorched Borneo. Droughts hit Australia. An estimated 2,000 people died. All told, the harm estimations ranged from $ 8 billion to $ 13 billion. ( Johnson )

El Ni O is back and no 1 has put out the welcome mat. This twelvemonth is expected to be stronger and more destructive than the 1982-83 event that cost the universe over 8 billion dollars. Scientists continue to document and analyze past events to derive a better apprehension of the phenomenon. It & # 8217 ; s no simple undertaking because no two El Ni os are likewise and each occurs at irregular intervals runing from two to ten old ages. El Ni O caused the anchovy population along the Peruvian seashore to drop from 20 million to 2 million in 1972-73. This in bend reduced the figure of marine birds who fed on the anchovy. In 1982-83 the strongest El Ni O of the century occurred. Weather-related catastrophes hit all five continents. In 1991-92, the sum of harm was numbering over eight billion dollars. There were terrible drouths in tropical topographic points and major implosion therapy in the Upper Mississippi Valley. A big figure of hurricanes occurred in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. ( Livezey )

In other words, 1997-1998 El Ni O may be the biggest in 150 old ages, some scientists predict. ( Livezey )

The first hints were found in the 1920s by the British scientist Sir Gilbert Walker who discovered that there was a connexion between barometric readings at Stationss on the eastern and western sides of the Pacific. He noticed that when force per unit area rises in the E, it normally falls in the West, and frailty versa. Sir Gilbert dramatized this procedure by mentioning to it as the & # 8220 ; Southern Oscillation & # 8221 ; . The Southern Oscillation plays an of import function in the behaviour of predominating air currents in the equatorial Pacific. When the force per unit area is high in the eastern Pacific and low in the western Pacific, surface air currents are driven toward the West along the equator from the Galapagos Islands about all the manner to Indonesia. This is said to be a & # 8220 ; high-index & # 8221 ; ( strong gradient ) status. When the force per unit area oscillates back to a & # 8220 ; low-index & # 8221 ; ( weak gradient ) status, the eastern surface winds weaken. Walker noticed that Asiatic monsoon seasons under low index conditions are frequently linked to drought in Australia, Indonesia, India, and parts of Africa and mild winters in western Canada. Old ages subsequently, research workers learned that desert islands in the cardinal equatorial Pacific receive small or no rainfall, except for low-index old ages when they experience torrential rains for months. Hence, Walker & # 8217 ; s Southern Oscillation is besides linked to dramatic alterations in tropical rainfall. It wasn & # 8217 ; t until the late sixtiess that the connexion between Walker & # 8217 ; s Southern Oscillation and El Ni O was made. Some 50 old ages after Walker & # 8217 ; s observations, the Norse professor Jacob Bjerknes at the University of California was the first to see a connexion between remarkably warm sea-surface temperatures, the weak east winds, and heavy rainfall that accompany low-index

conditions in the equatorial Pacific. It is now good accepted that a low-index Southern Oscillation status is associated with El Ni O, frequently referred to as “ENSO” to stress the connexion. ( Livezey )

The conveyance of H2O, and hence heat, by the air currents in the equatorial Pacific is cardinal to understanding the mechanics of an El Ni O. The eastern air currents that blow along the equator and the southeasterly air currents that blow along the Peru and Ecuador seashores entrain surface H2O along with them. The Earth & # 8217 ; s rotary motion deflects the surface currents northerly in the Northern Hemisphere and due south in the Southern Hemisphere due to what is known as the Coriolis Effect. The surface Waterss are hence deflected off from the equator in both waies and off from the coastline. Where the surface H2O moves off, colder, nutrient-rich H2O comes up from below to replace it, a phenomenon known as upwelling. Both the equatorial upwelling and the coastal upwelling are concentrated in narrow parts less than 160 km broad. When the air currents are blowing strongly, this set of cold H2O takes the signifier of a typical & # 8220 ; cold lingua & # 8221 ; widening westward along the equator from the South American seashore all the manner to the international date line. This characteristic can be observed utilizing infrared satellite imagination, which measures the H2O temperature, and satellite altimetry, which measures the comparative depression in sea degree in parts of upwelling. ( Allen )

During an El Ni o twelvemonth, the east winds blow strongly for a figure of months, the thermocline about reaches the surface in the eastern equatorial Pacific, and tremendous volumes of warm surface H2O build-up in the West & # 8230 ; so the air currents weaken & # 8230 ; all of that energy has to travel someplace. First, the eastern air currents begin to withdraw eastward. As the air current retreats, equatorial upwelling lessenings, cut downing the supply of foods to come up dwellers. Sea degree beads in the West and rises in the E as warm surface H2O surges eastward along the equator in the signifier of a pulsation. When this pulsation of comparatively warm H2O reaches the eastern terminal of the basin, typically a few months subsequently, it is forced to turn northerly and southerly along the seashore, doing pilchards and other species of fish to travel, and raising sea degree as it goes. These effects have been felt as far north as Canada and as far south as cardinal Chile. As the moist air above the ocean warms, deep clouds are formed which produce heavy rain along the equator, switching of all time eastward. Atmospheric force per unit area adjusts consequently. Barometers fall over the cardinal and eastern Pacific and rise over Indonesia and Australia, ensuing in farther weakening and eastbound retreat of the east winds, merely as Sir Gilbert Walker observed about 75 old ages ago. Scientists now know that the annihilating effects of El Ni O are non merely confined to the equatorial Pacific, but throughout the Americas, and possibly beyond. We are merely get downing to appreciate how monolithic these catastrophes are. ( Allen )

The job of observing planetary heating has been well complicated. This is because some analyses have suggested that some of the characteristics of the planetary heating pelagic signature resemble El Ni O. Picking these two apart in the records is slippery although some success has been achieved so far. Global warming s impact on El Ni o itself is non clear either because recent work has suggested that there are feedback effects in the Torrid Zones that offset some of the heating at the equator. ( Arbarbanel )

The Atlantic hurricane season was a batch less blowy than usual, and El Ni O is the ground. Three hurricanes blew in from the Atlantic during a storm season that ended Sunday. The norm is six, while the National Hurricane Center chased a brawny 17 hurricanes in the Pacific, it merely watched seven named storms in the Atlantic. ( Neely )

Precipitation was above normal in November, but non remarkably wet. Seasonal per centums were by and large the highest in the Central Valley and in coastal countries, with some intense storms reported in the South Coast part early December. ( Wilson )

As of Dec. 22, rainfall was 116 per centum of normal in Eureka, 163 per centum in Sacramento, 185 per centum in San Francisco, 127 per centum in Fresno, 189 per centum in Bakersfield, 231 per centum in Santa Barbara, 147 per centum in Los Angeles and 76 per centum in San Diego. ( Neely )

The snow battalion near Donner Summit, West of Lake Tahoe, was under 40 inches compared with more than 110 inches in late December 1982, when a old El Ni o event gave California a record moisture season. ( Fullmer )

As of mid-December, multipurpose reservoirs in the Central Valley had more than 7 million acre-feet of inundation control infinite, more than 2 million more than required. Statewide river overflow is about 80 per centum of norm for this clip of the twelvemonth. ( Katcher )

The National Weather Service said that this twelvemonth s warming in the tropical Pacific could take to Christmas snow in Texas, New Mexico, the Mississippi vale, even as far south as Mexico. ( Neely )

The Thai Interior Ministry, meanwhile, has ordered provincial governments to fix forces, equipment and H2O trucks to assist in countries worst affected by the drouth. ( Wilson )

The Asiatic Disaster Preparedness Center, which is scheduled to keep a crises meeting in Bangkok following month, has warned that El Ni O will worsen the fiscal crisis that is already pounding Thailand and several other Southeast Asiatic states. ( Katcher )

El Ni o eventually hit northern California with swamping rains and coastal inundations over he weekend and meteorologists said that on Tuesday the part was set to have more impacts of unsmooth conditions this hebdomad. After months of listening to doom-and-gloom anticipations about the likely effects of El Ni O, occupants in the San Francisco Bay country were treated to a show of the conditions phenomenon & # 8217 ; s might when heavy rains snarled traffic and raised frights of mudslides in hilly countries. Forecasters said the rains along the California seashore were influenced by El Ni O, a warm-water mass off the seashore of South America that has powered climatological displacements across the Earth. ( Wilson )

It appears that many people in the Midwest are overlooking El Ni O. They likely think that merely as long that El Ni o isn T impacting us in any truly bad ways, they shouldn t worry about it. I think what comes about, must travel around. In the spring and in the summer we will see highly low temperatures. These could impact us by killing off many agricultural merchandises and making really low or no net incomes for the midwest husbandmans. The opposite effects of El Ni O could besides happen. The remarkably cold temperatures could happen in the late summer and early autumn, which would ensue in a immense loss of harvests. The same could besides go on to another state that we depend on for purchasing a peculiar merchandise. If that happens to another state s merchandise, so we would hold to pay a batch more for the same merchandise.

Therefore I think we should set more attempt into foretelling El Ni os. I think we could look back in to the past records of serious conditions storms and seek to happen a form to the El Ni O. If we could make that, we could break predict El Ni O and salvage many lives and much money. If we save could salvage money and lives, I think we should be willing to pay any monetary value to foretell El Ni os better. I think that if we work hard plenty, we could obtain the engineering and we would be able to better foretell the El Ni O. Then if the temperature was traveling to drop in the first portion of spring, we could wait until it was over to works our harvests. Or if the temperature was traveling to drop subsequently in the summer husbandmans could reap the harvests earlier.

If my program isn T accepted, El Ni O will go on to destruct personal and Federal belongings. El Ni O will besides go on to kill 1000s of people every clip it occurs.

If my program is recognized amendss to belongings and deceases may still happen, but it will significantly cut down the figure. We will be able to foretell the effects and better prepare for it.

Allen, Jane. El Nino. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.quest.arc.nasa.gov/topex/QA/What_ Causes_El_Nino.txt.

Arbarbanel, Henry. El Nino. 11 January 1998. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.abcnews com.

Fullmer, Brent. El Ninos Energy. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.umassd.edu/Public? Kamaral /thesis/ElNino/Energy.htm.

Jarvinen, Brian. El Nino. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.dir.ucar.edu/esig/currents.html.

Johnson, Christina. A Brief History of El Nino. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.elnino.com.

Katcher, Oliver. El Ninos Size. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.enn.com/special reports/el/nino/size/index.htm.

Livezey, Robert. El Nino. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.wcco.com/news/enso.

Neely, Vivan. Results of El Nino. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.vision.net.au/ daly/elnino/results.htm.

Weisser, Pete. El Ninos of the Past. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.broadcast.webpoint.com/ tic/elnino/elninohistory.htm.

Wilson, Robert. Water Picture Normal-So Far. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.ogp.noaa.gov/enso.

Outline

Theme Statement: El Ni os happen about every twosome of old ages, and each twelvemonth they are blamed for infinite deceases and one million millions of dollars in harm. When the engineering came out, we developed package to foretell twisters, hurricanes, and most other natural catastrophes. Now we must set more attempt into foretelling strong and destructive El Ni os.

I. History of El Ni O

A. What is El Ni O

B. Naming of El Ni O

C. Past El Ni os

II. Theoretical Causes of El Ni O

A. Southern Oscillation

B. Global Warming

III. Effectss of El Ni O

A. Hurricanes

B. Rainfall

C. Other Catastrophes

IV. Solutions

A. Recognize the El Ni O

B. What we should make

C. What will go on

A. If we accept my program

B. If we don t accept my program