Mr. Kipper
World Geography (3)
20 September, 1999

This afternoon in our world geography class, we watched a video entitled “Tracking El Niño.” El Niño is a phenomenon of the Pacific Ocean which causes major storms in North and South America, raising the weather machine to a dramatic and intense pitch and generally causing bad stuff to happen worldwide. Only the seasons have a greater climatic impact than El Niño, which is, in the words of one of the scientists on the video, a “momentary change in the climate of planet Earth” rather than a storm or anything like that.

What’s normal is for trade winds to blow from east to west, causing warm waters to pile up and form a deep pool of warm water. But every 3-7 years, El Niño alters this. It can slacken or even reverse the trade winds, causing an enormous pool of unusually warm water where it’s not supposed to be. This disrupts the entire weather pattern-- causing droughts in normally wet places and heavy rainfall in deserts, etc. It also causes violent storms in many places. In the 1982-83 El Niño, the Peruvian fish industry was totally destroyed, costing them $1 billion in damages. 2,000 were killed. In an ancient civilization, the Mochas, excavated ruins revealed that 90 people were brutally sacrificed as the Mocha tried to appease their gods so that El Niño would stop. Obviously, El Niño is not a wonderful thing. No, quite the contrary! And everyone hates it.

Scientists rigged satellites to try to predict El Niño, but a volcano’s eruption disrupted everything and it slipped on by. Because the satellites, being above the water’s surface, could be fooled by something like that, they fixed buoys that would float on the water and measure things like ocean current, surface temperature, and winds. They finally put the buoys out and everything was going great until one of them disappeared-- they spent a long time looking for it, but it was gone. It’s possible the ocean currents pulled the anchor into water that was too deep, or that fishermen did something to it because it attracted fish. Anyway, the buoys were supposed to help them predict El Niño when it was coming so they could do useful things like find out about the impending droughts in South Africa and the Indian Subcontinent. The buoy system did work to predict it, but they were way off about the magnitude and we had one of the most deadly occurrences of it ever. Ah, at least they tried!

The Galapagos Islands are one place that have been greatly affected by El Niño. Many scientists think the phenomenon has a big evolutionary impact. But then, they think they know everything.... However, it seems they’ll get plenty of chances to improve their systems, as El Niño doesn’t look like it’s going to stop happening any time soon. ^_^