Word: nino
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...then there's the North Atlantic oscillation, which makes El Nino's effect on the eastern U.S. as unpredictable as its influence over Brazil. This climate system, says Gerry Bell of the Climate Prediction Center, changes the position of the jet stream over the ocean. Until recently, the North Atlantic oscillation, which strongly influences Europe's weather as well, was considered to be primarily a manifestation of the atmosphere. But researcher Michael McCartney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution thinks it too is heavily influenced by the sea--in this case by an ocean gyre, a surface current that follows...
Each of these phenomena can boost or curb the effects of El Nino. But do they influence each other at a deeper level? Does El Nino trigger any of these other cycles? Is it triggered by them? To find out, Fairbanks turned to the Indian Ocean, where sea-surface temperatures, it turns out, rise and fall in response to both the monsoonal cycle and the El Nino cycle...
...colleagues reported in a recent issue of the journal Science, a 150-year-old coral from the Seychelles Islands perfectly preserves both sets of fluctuations. One pattern tracks the El Nino fluctuations, swinging back and forth every few years; the other rises and falls on a 12-year schedule that closely follows India's official monsoon-rainfall index...
What stands out in the data is an unusually sharp rise in sea-surface temperatures in 1877, the very year that a strong El Nino coincided with the greatest failure of the monsoon in recent times. "The way I think of it," says Fairbanks, "is as an orchestra. Sometimes the monsoon and El Nino play together, and sometimes they play apart. But where's the conductor...
That's why corals and tree rings and ice cores are so important. They are like a tape recording of the various instruments in the climate orchestra, ranging from El Nino's high-frequency violin to the deeper cello- and basslike tones struck by longer-term cycles. By studying the hidden rhythms in these signals, scientists may finally be able to see how the parts fit together, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes clashing...