Word: nino
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Only a few months ago, El Nino was starting to look like the most overhyped story of the decade. The periodic warming of Pacific Ocean waters that plays havoc with the world's weather was supposed to be the El Nino of the century--worse even than the great El Nino of 1982-83, which left thousands dead and caused $13 billion in property damage. By last fall, however, El Nino had wreaked only piddling levels of destruction in the U.S., and the public was beginning to see it less as an impending apocalypse than as a gimmick to sell...
Suddenly, El Nino doesn't seem so funny anymore. Last week one of the most powerful storms on record slammed into California, swamping the coast with 30-ft. waves, drenching the state with torrential rains and blasting it with near hurricane-force winds. Rail lines and major highways were cut by floodwaters up and down the coast, and hundreds of homes were destroyed. By week's end two more storms had struck and at least four people had been swept to their death by mudslides and raging waters. With another severe weather system bearing down on the coast--and ocean...
Indeed, contrary to the widespread impression--and all those jokes about El No-Show--the El Nino of 1997-98 never really faltered. When you put it all together--forest fires in Indonesia, typhoons in Japan, torrential rains in East Africa, unusually powerful hurricanes in the Pacific, flash floods in Peru and Ecuador, freak snowstorms in Mexico--this El Nino has already unleashed more than its share of epic mayhem. But precisely because its reach is so long and its effects so broadly distributed around the globe, it has been difficult for most people to appreciate the full force...
...logos) and where the most compelling mysteries involve the intricacies of quad jumps, clap skates, luge weight and curling. For Nagano is robed in that symbol of purity: snow, unsullied and ready for the pursuit of truth as expressed in athletic prowess. Out of mind are potential scapegoats--El Nino, the Asian meltdown. Of course, like all other Olympics, Nagano has its intrinsic debates, but they are sporting and professional ones for the most part or inextricable from the enterprise: the cupidity of organizers, the rebelliousness of snowboarders, and, oh yes, a feud among some of the Russian pair skaters...
...misguided to say there is no link between global warming and recent anomalous El Nino behavior. El Nino is certainly a natural phenomenon, but it occurs because there is a need to move heat out of the tropical Pacific Ocean, where it would otherwise build up. Because global warming caused by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere disturbs the heat balance, it affects El Nino. The behavior of El Nino in the past 20 years is statistically very unusual compared with that of the previous 100 years. Determining exactly which part of this unusual behavior is connected to global warming...