Introduction
The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) refers to the natural occurring event that entails inconsistent temperatures of the ocean in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. The warmer waters oscillate in a back and forth movement over the Pacific. The trend fluctuates between two conditions, that is, warmer than normal eastern and central equatorial Pacific Sea Surface Temperatures SSTs (El Niño) and cooler than normal eastern and central Pacific SSTs (La Niña).
Mostly, Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) are the identities of the oscillation; however, it is essential to comprehend that fluctuation in sub-surface temperatures are the first one to respond to an oncoming fluctuation in the ENSO stage. A case in example is during the transitioning of ENSO into a warmer stage and the sub-surface temperatures begin to warm higher than the average temperature, whereas a shallow level of close to mean temperature maintains the surface. At long last, temperatures of the ocean surface will react to the warming of temperatures at the sub-surface, which is followed by a warm phase of ENSO cycle. When the ENSO zone of the Pacific temperatures is almost average, it is referred to as ENSO neutral. Thus, the oscillation of the warmer waters is neither in a cool nor warm phase. Characteristically, atmospheric trends throughout ENSO neutral are regulated more by other climate trends including PNA and NAO that differ on a shorter timescale (Kren, 2015).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Discussion
During normal or none- El Niño conditions, the trade winds from South America usually blow to the west in the tropical Pacific Ocean along the equator towards Asia. The winds pile up off Asia, then warm surface water to enable the surface of the sea to be nearly a half meter greater at Indonesia compared to Ecuador in S. America. The superficial temperature is averagely 8ºC warmer from the coast of Asia compared to the eastern Pacific because of the outpouring cold water from the deeper east Pacific heights. The cool water from S. America is rich in nutrient and supports high productivity levels, different ecosystems of marines, and fisheries. The rising air is associated with rainfall and clouds which are found over the warmest water close to Asia, while the eastern Pacific is nearly dry.
El Niño describes a bimodal difference in the barometric pressure of seal level between scrutiny points at Darwin, Tahiti, and Australia. It is recognized in the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), and is characteristically consistent with variation between the two pressures of barometer. Usually, Darwin’s lower pressure, as well as Tahiti’s higher pressure, leads to circulation of air from the east to the west, and thus draws warmer surface water to the west which results to precipitation to Australia including Western Pacific Ocean. When there is a weakening of pressure change, and which is highly coincidental with occurrences of El Niño, regions of western Pacific Ocean, including Australia undergo major drought whereas throughout the ocean more precipitation is likely to result in flooding to the western coasts of equatorial S. America.
Even though the precise initiating causes of El Niño event are unclear, the two elements including the atmospheric pressure and sea surface temperatures are strongly correlated. During the occurrence of El Niño, the eastern trade winds that converge throughout the equatorial Pacific Ocean become weak. Thus, the ocean currents are slowed and eventually draw the water surface away from the South American western coast, which moderates the outpouring of cold and rich-in-nutrient water from a dip in the ocean to flatten out the thermocline while allowing warmer superficial water to accumulate on the eastern section of the oceanic basin.
When trade winds strengthen and weakens, it is due to atmospheric pressure gradient over the tropical Pacific Ocean. The warming surface of the sea drops the atmospheric pressure through heat transfer and making the water more buoyant. The quantity long wave is also a manifestation of El Niño and precipitation, for example, the infrared radiation that leaves the atmosphere. Long wave radiation that is released into the atmosphere from the earth's surface is likely to escape into space. Some of the radiation is prevented not to escape. The amount of wavelength radiation that reaches the earth's space is measured by satellites and the convectional amount of varied parts of the basin can be approximated. The warming water's thermal expansion in the eastern region of the basin measurably increases the level of the sea which can be measured by satellite sensors. Thus, sea levels variations are indicators of the El Niño presence. At the time of El Niño, the level of the sea in the eastern Pacific is above normal.
There are some of the consequences of the weather anomaly. First, the essay will look at the global economic impacts of an El Niño. The weather anomaly affects diverse sections of the Pacific Ocean resulting in different climatological variations all over the world. An observation on the impact of El Niño on the global economy manifest that the anomaly influences drastically the macroeconomic as well as the prices of various commodities in the affected regions. El Niño is considered as a causal variable and an analysis conducted in response to macroeconomic dependable variable including fuel, inflation as well as non-fuel products and the general input, shows that the weather anomaly has impacted largely on the economies of the affected regions. The impacts have been linked to the increase in the price of commodities as well as inability to access imported goods. Thus, affected areas incur huge losses that negatively influence the Gross Domestic Product alongside the Gross National Product (Chaves et al . 2015).
Industries that is sensitive to El Niño including agriculture, energy, and construction, alongside outdoor recreation account for almost 10 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Thus, El Niño affects the larger portion of the global economy and extends to parts of insurance and finance services, wholesale and retail trade, and manufacturing. El Niño affects essential variables like revenues, sales, and employment in a broad range of climate-sensitive sectors and industries. The economic gains result to both losses and gains among regions and within sectors. For example, based on balance, the impact of the 1997-1998 El Niño in the United States could as well be of economic benefit, associated with losses and gains across industries and regions. Whereas economic effects tend to cancel one another out at the nationwide level, El Niño does result to actual economic losses including crop losses or storm damage, which is not initiated with gains elsewhere (Chaves et al. 2015). The losses cannot be reduced or prevented by a better mitigation or forecast. For instance, averagely, El Niño leads to agricultural losses, property losses which are some fraction of its economic effects.
On the other hand, the economic benefits of El Niño are better forecasts for El Niño which leads to improved economic decisions. Since losses are inevitable, NOAA's El Niño prediction result to economic value by allowing industries, individuals as well as the public officials to take timely and earlier precautions on the basis of the forecast to reduce or mitigate as well as capitalize on the data provided to enhance economic outcomes. The precaution measures can help in terms of savings to heighten preparedness, reduce vulnerability to El Niño and making both consumers and producers better off and adjust crop storage inventories in prospective of changed yields. There has also been the consequence of measuring economic benefits of forecasting El Niño. According to economists, there are quantified benefits of Improved El Niño forecasting in different ways. The benefits include altering the planting decisions by the region's agriculture, optimizing inventory storage prices, changing hatchery releases as well as harvest rates and improving on new insurance systems through enhanced price risk projection (Chaves et al. 2015).
Secondly, based on international relations, El Niño occurrence is likely to tip countries into war (Capa, 2015). For instance, the tensions between the regime of Peru and the rebel group known as the Shining Path led to bloody skirmishes in 1982. In the same year, El Niño occurrence scoured fields of potato across the hills of the country. Scientists have linked the widespread of the clashes with the global climatic condition. Today, new studies propose that civil war is twice as likely to occur in several countries worldwide during years of El Niño. More relations point out to the association of severe climatic conditions and political violence mostly in the world's poor regions. The weather anomaly has brought nations together through the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to lessen the effect of El Niño phenomenon. Thus, intergovernmental bodies and others who are welcome can actively come together for a common course of supporting IDNDR programs to lessen the effect of El Niño. By nations coming together, they are able to establish strategic scientific, social, economic and operational approach towards prevention, preparedness as well as mitigation of El Niño-triggered disasters.
Thirdly, through IDNDR, the national and local capacity is promoted and strengthened to adapt to disasters, specifically with respect to vulnerable communities. Besides, adverse climatic conditions such as El Niño has led to the institution of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) which formulates the scientific as well as technical material from many climate and forecasting programs to devise means of applying global forecast on different regions. Moreover, it has brought together through UN inter-agency program all key international climate-associated activities. Thus, the climate agenda offers a strategy for worldwide organizations, governments, and the NGOs to plan their influences to climate-linked activities allot their resources and gain from their complimentary programs (Gianotti, 2016).
Forth, consequences of has led to the establishment of the collaborative program based on climate change and human health which are well elaborated by WMO, UNEP and WHO and approved by IACCA. The goal is to bring together member states to promote assessments of vulnerability, strategies of adaptation alongside an adaptation of technologies towards enhancing health while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The weather anomaly has also led to the exchange as well as delivery of data on wellbeing effects of climate change including mitigation approaches and effective strategies to adaptation including the promotion of research on El Niño as a weather anomaly. Besides, there is the need for health, social, economic and other constraints of human regarding El Niño occurrences to be officiously mainstreamed within the range and productivities and United Nations Task Force as emphasized by International Human Dimensions of Global Change Programs (IHDP) through the IACCA.
Fifth, the weather anomaly has resulted in research and monitoring which has highlighted the need to establish scientific program that will assess the effect of El Niño on human as well as wellbeing infrastructure including services. It has as well led to attention to the vulnerability of populations to El Niño, ways in which the disease incidences will react to extreme conditions of the climate and the ways in which the weather will adapt to changes in illness and mortality due to changes in climate. El Niño has a potential effect on the local economies which requires nations to plan ahead with an aim of mitigating its effects. At the local level, El Niño influence prices of commodities and macroeconomics of several states. It constrains the supply of rain-driven agricultural producers, lowers agricultural products, and hinders construction and services activities, affects prices of food while generalizing inflation which can result in social unrest in poor countries that are dependent on imported food as asserted by Zebiak et al. (2014).
At the local level, for instance, in southeast Australia it leads to hot and dry summers; increases the adversity of bush fires and lessens wheat exports while driving up international wheat prices. In India, the period of El Niño mostly coincides with the time of weak monsoon and the rising temperatures which severely impacts the agricultural sector in India increases prices of domestic food as well as adds to inflation alongside inflation anticipation. The effects have seen the need to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing locally in such areas of epidemiology, information and communication systems and environmental sanitation. In addition to facilitation of knowledge and experience, there is the necessity to strengthen locally the role of health departments such as ministries regarding disaster preparedness activities. Further, to enhance the establishment of possible sources of financing for El Niño-associated programs and to enhance systems of epidemiological investigation at the local level while improving accessibility to epidemiological alongside meteorological data such as funding for material and human assets in a bid to strengthen local information network (Wang et al. 2013).
Volcanic eruptions have a high potential of resulting to the El Niño weather anomaly. The weather anomaly is attributed to the explanation that during volcanic eruptions, different aerosols are emitted and further spread into the atmosphere in the southern and northern hemisphere. Eventually, heat from the sun is reflected back to space and at long last parts of the atmosphere experience the cooling effect. In reaction to the occurrence, the normal trend of association is impacted making the waters at the Pacific Ocean to react by warming up so that to maintain the balance. The relation between volcanic eruptions and the occurrence of El Niño has proved to hold basis throughout the generations.
Just like eruptions of the volcano, meteorites are mostly linked to extreme heat. The extreme heat is linked to different tectonic emissions that mostly accumulate in the southern and northern hemisphere. As a result of the emissions, a lot of heat build up to the inner space causing minimal heat to reach the earth and eventually the earth undergoes a period of great coldness. The cycle of the heat from the ocean through to the atmosphere is influenced which causes the areas around the central and north of the Pacific Ocean to warm up due to the cold. At long last, the abnormal heating, as well as warming, causes El Niño (Cai et al. 2014).
Conclusion
El Niño is as a result of changes in climate which is associated with diversity in temperatures. There are different ways in which the earth can undergo the changes in temperatures. One of the ways in which the earth can undergo changes in temperature is through nuclear reactions. Nuclear reactions can easily result in El Niño as during reactions a chemical known as helium -3 is emitted. Helium-3 result in some parts of the earth to be extremely warm, therefore, the ice levels will constantly fluctuate. At the end of the process, the resultant difference in temperatures causes El Niño.
Global warming is momentarily becoming an overall cause of El Niño. Global warming results in differences in temperatures within the atmosphere and is mostly caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which at long last result to warming of the water bodies and leads to El Niño.
References
Braconnot, P., Brierley, C., Harrison, S. P., von Gunten, L., & Kiefer, T. (2013). El Niño-Southern Oscillation. PAGES news 21(2), 1-52
Cai, W., Borlace, S., Lengaigne, M., Van Rensch, P., Collins, M., Vecchi, G., ... & England, M. H. (2014). Increasing frequency of extreme El Niño events due to greenhouse warming. Nature climate change , 4 (2), 111-116.
Capa Morocho, M. (2015). Climate variability effects on field crops in Iberian Peninsula. Predictability (Doctoral dissertation, Agronomos). 1-183
Chaves, L. F., Chuang, T. W., Sasa, M., & Gutiérrez, J. M. (2015). Snakebites are associated with poverty, weather fluctuations, and El Niño. Science advances , 1 (8), e1500249.
Gianotti, D. J. S. (2016). Potential predictability of precipitation over the continental United States (Doctoral dissertation, Boston University). 1-131
Kren, A. C. (2015). Investigating the role of the Sun, the quasi-biennial oscillation, and the Pacific decadal oscillation on decadal climate variability of the stratosphere (Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder). 1-109
Wang, B., Liu, J., Kim, H. J., Webster, P. J., Yim, S. Y., & Xiang, B. (2013). Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon intensified by mega-El Niño/southern oscillation and Atlantic multidecadal oscillation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 110 (14), 5347-5352.
Zebiak, S. E., Orlove, B., Muñoz, Á. G., Vaughan, C., Hansen, J., Troy, T., ... & Garvin, S. (2015). Investigating El Niño ‐ Southern Oscillation and society relationships. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change , 6 (1), 17-34.
