Word: oceanic
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...Nino would also bestow a patchwork of benefits. Off Chile, fishermen could look forward to catching anchovies normally found much farther north. Peruvians have been enjoying balmy beaches in the middle of their winter. And residents of the U.S. could look forward to fewer Atlantic Ocean hurricanes, an earlier spring in the Northeast and a blessed lull in tornadoes throughout the Midwest. All things considered, says Florida State University oceanographer James O'Brien, Americans should think of El Nino as a "good dude...
...result, the El Nino of 1997-98 will be the most closely observed in history. In the tropical Pacific, ships, satellites and stationary buoys are gathering mountains of continuous data--on sea-surface temperatures, wind speeds and directions, and ocean currents--that scientists at universities and government laboratories are feeding into powerful computers in hopes of creating a model of the climate system that evolves...
...terms of the climate machine, El Nino is more than just a sudden warm current off Peru. It refers to a rise in sea-surface temperatures over much of the equatorial Pacific as well as a change in winds and ocean currents. Indeed, there is a kind of climatic flip-flop, with a reversal of conditions across a wide stretch of ocean. Consequently, climate experts no longer refer to El Nino alone but speak of the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Rather like a pendulum, the ENSO cycle swings between an El Nino state and its opposite, a cold-water state...
...visualize how the ENSO cycle works, think of the Pacific Ocean as a big bathtub, with a fan stirring up air representing the trade winds. In the ENSO cycle's neutral or cold phase, these winds blow from east to west, pushing water away from the South American coast, so that the ocean's surface is a couple of feet lower off Peru than it is off Indonesia. The difference, although seemingly small, has important consequences: to replace the water that the winds have swept away, cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths wells up, and so Peru's waters...
...calls "a weird kind of sloshing." As the trade winds slacken, he explains, they give rise to slow-moving waves that surge from west to east and exert downward pressure on the thermocline. This is the boundary layer of chilly water that separates the much colder water in the ocean depths from the sun-warmed water near the surface. Normally, the eastern Pacific's thermocline lies at a shallow depth and thus mixes with water near the surface, cooling it. But in El Nino years, the thermocline sinks too deep, and water temperatures at the surface rise noticeably...