El Nino Year's Tropical Storms And Hurricanes example essay topic

We live on an incredibly large planet. Even broader than the size of the planet are the amount of changes and relationships between humans, animals, environment, weather, and the affects of each. Many times with busy schedules and modern lifestyles we forget the interaction that goes on between any number of concepts or idea's. We fail to realize that a specific weather occurrence in the Pacific Ocean can have an affect on every day life in the United States.

El Nino is one of the largest scientific phenomenons that scientists have ever explored. The main concepts of El Nino are very simple and there are many variations, causes, affects, and relationships to study. The main idea behind El Nino is that the wind changes direction across the Pacific Ocean. In a non El Nino year (normal), the trade winds blow from east to west across the ocean, from North and South America towards the tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean. In an El Nino year, the trade winds change direction and blow from Asia and the tropical Pacific towards North and South America (NOAA B, 2004).

The changes in these winds, commonly called Southern Oscillation winds because the majority of activity happens in the southern parts of the Pacific, produce many other changes. In the final analysis, the winds are the root of this scheme. John Daly (2004) discussed how the winds produce major changes in the temperature of the ocean water. This is the second main concept of El Nino. In normal years, when the wind blows from east to west, the temperature at "Sea Surface" is about 8 degrees cooler in the west than in the east.

During El Nino, the winds blow a certain amount of water towards the west, thus piling it up and making its depth approximately one half meter deeper. Because of the loss of water at either coast, the deeper ocean water rises to replace what is gone. The deeper / cooler water is the source of many incomes in North and South America; however, in an El Nino year, the warmer water sits on top of the ocean, which creates many tribulations relating to both income and weather. The last main point of El Nino is the weather that follows due to the changes in water temperature.

Precipitation follows the warmer water, whichever direction it flows. During the normal wind patterns the rainfall in the southern Pacific islands is consistent and creates their tropical identity. When the wind shifts the other direction it creates droughts and heat waves in the western Pacific and often time's floods, or blizzards, in the eastern Pacific (NOAA A, 2004). The theory of El Nino was originally explored and documented in the 1560's. Mayell (1997) discussed how fishermen from Peru wondered why in certain years the normally cold water would become warm and the flow would reverse in an opposite direction. The change in water temperature would kill the majority of the fish and thus cause major problems for fishermen and many others who relied on fish.

The changes in the water temperature usually began near Christmas, therefore the fishermen called this phenomenon El Nino, which means The Christ Child in Spanish. Scientists who studied El Nino stayed only on the South American coast until the early 1900's. British scientist Sir Gilbert Walker was stationed in India to study weather patterns after a monsoon in 1899 devastated the country. As he studied the monsoon's he noticed a connection between water temperature and rainfall.

He also discovered that the barometer readings of eastern and western Pacific Ocean were almost always identically opposite. He noticed that when pressure rises in the east, it usually falls in the west, and vice versa. He coined the term Southern Oscillation to dramatize the ups and downs in this east-west seesaw effect. He also linked the affects of the wind and water temperatures to drought or rainfall, depending on which side of the ocean you studied.

Sir Gilbert Walker took large amounts of grief for his bold statements, but the advances in technology in the future would prove he was correct (Mayell, 1997). As technology advanced throughout the 1900's the ability to observe and research was increased. Originally a Norwegian meteorologist, then a professor at the University of California in the 1960's, Jacob Bjerknes, put together the connection of wind direction and Sir Gilberts discoveries of water temperature and barometer readings. With the readings of computers the phenomenon now seemed fairly simple. Bjerknes coined the term ENSO which stands for El Nino Southern Oscillation and is used by scientists today (Mayell, 1997). After the discoveries and observations of El Nino scientists began to wonder if the opposite phenomenon were possible.

If so, did it have any implications? Discoveries were made that there was a connection between unusually cold ocean water and changes around the globe. This separate phenomenon was called La Nina, which means the little girl in Spanish, and has been labeled as a temperature change in the entire Pacific Ocean, rather than the seesaw affect of El Nino. La Nina has been characterized to be not nearly as dramatic or have the implications that El Nino has.

The impacts of La Nina are generally only seen during the winter time and as a temperature change, instead of an entire climate and lifestyle change. These changes, however, can result in more or less precipitation depending on the region and degree of change (Redmond, 1998). Scientists soon began to wonder how often El Nino patterns would occur and if they could be predicted. After research and documentation of weather patterns dating all the way back to the 1870's, scientists discovered that the El Nino phenomenon occurred fairly irregularly, but there seemed to be some action at least once every two to seven years.

The most recent El Nino years were 1982-1983, 1991-1992, 1994-1995, and 1997-2000. The longest recorded El Nino activities in the last 50 years occurred between June 1998 - May, 2000. Although sometimes being very mild, ENSO was still present. Every El Nino occurrence varies in some way such as the magnitude, duration, or measured causes around the globe (NOAA C, 2004). The reason that ENSO is documented and measured in the Pacific Ocean instead of any other ocean seems to be for one main reason: the overall size of the Pacific as compared to the Atlantic or Indian Oceans (Daly, 2004). The size of the Pacific Ocean allows the water to swell in size and temperature as it moves in one direction or another.

There are similar occurrences in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, but there is not enough space for the water and wind to become large enough to make a significant impact. There are several general environmental patterns that are dictated by El Nino and La Nina. The first is tropical storms and hurricanes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2004) states that during El Nino year's tropical storms and hurricanes develop easier and more often in the Pacific Ocean than in a normal non ENSO year. At that same time, tropical storms and hurricanes occur less frequently and seem to be less drastic in the Atlantic Ocean. During a La Nina year the changing temperatures support the opposite to occur.

Locally, the eastern coast of the United States has a higher number of tropical storms and hurricanes during La Nina (NOAA C, 2004). There is also a relationship between coral bleaching and ENSO. Coral are the rock like deposits that are numerous around islands and reefs in warm water regions, such as the South Pacific. The bleaching occurs when the coral are placed under stress by being in changing water temperatures for an extended amount of time. The bleaching is marked by the loss of color (whitening) of the coral and ultimately death if the stress is prolonged. The main reason that the coral bleach and die soon after is because the temperature rises above that which corals can expel symbiotic algae.

The algae is what produces the brown color, without it they appear white (bleached); when they are deprived of the by-products of the algae for extended periods, they die (AIMS, 2003). The most well known and publicly discussed environmental relationship is between El Nino and the warming it produces. There is a lot of confusion and many questions in the public about the relationships connecting climate phenomena such as El Nino, La Nina, the greenhouse effect, and global temperatures. Clearly, El Nino influences the global temperatures by at least a few tenths of a degree Celsius a few months after the peak of the water waring in the Pacific Ocean. This is because of the large amounts of heat that are lost to the atmosphere in the South Pacific Ocean after it cools (NOAA C, 2004).

Does El Nino contribute to the greenhouse affect and earth's warming? Or does the opposite occur and the greenhouse gases contribute to El Nino warming the ocean water? Computer climate models, which are now the chief source of research and information, and are unable to answer those questions because both situations are a warming of the overall temperature of the earth and cannot be singled out. Some scientists have speculated that a warmer temperature throughout the atmosphere and earths surface is likely to produce more frequent El Nino's.

The computer research attempts to say the opposite: weaker El Nino's are produced in warmer temperatures. This very complicated issue is now the prime area of scientific research relating to this phenomenon (NOAA B, 2004). Other than the hurricanes, tropical storms, coral, and overall global warming produced by the changing water temperatures, there are often many major changes due to the phenomenon. The large majority of which occur in the wintertime. During El Nino years the temperatures of northern Canada and the northern United States are usually milder. At the same time the warmer temperatures push precipitation towards the edges and south towards California, Arizona, Texas and Florida creating wetter than average winters.

Documented El Nino years have caused droughts over the western parts of Asia and Australia. The lack of water and high heat has caused fires and dry land. Moving east towards Africa the drought usually continues in the same years that the warm water lies near North and South America. Droughts throughout the world often cause death. This is because the food chain and supply of fish is disrupted (Daly 2004). The affects can even be noticed in a place as far opposite from the Pacific Ocean as exists on earth: the Antarctic Ocean (USA Today, 2004).

In the March 1st, 2002 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, Ron Kwok, a senior research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this, "The study shows that the impact of El Nino is global and that processes as remote as those in the Polar Regions are affected. While we don't know yet the cause-and-effect relationship between the two, we do know the changes in sea ice cover cannot be explained by local climate variations alone and are instead linked to larger scale climate phenomena. ' Using satellite technology and research from the Snow and Ice Research Center in Boulder, Colorado, scientists discovered that while the ice temperature and amount stayed nearly the same, the distribution and thickness changed during El Nino years. Four El Nino episodes over the 17 year period, from 1982-1997 occurred at the same time as ice cover was reduced in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas of Antarctica (Williams, 2003). The worldwide implications that are caused by El Nino are countless.

The storyline that affects more people than any weather or temperature change are the economic changes. There are many industries that are directly impacted by El Nino such as agriculture, recreation, energy, construction, etc. There are just as many industries that are indirectly impacted by El Nino such as finance, insurance, retail, and service industries. There have been documented changes in the insurance industry in the United States since real awareness of El Nino began. The predicted weather changes and precipitation changes call for a change in insurance rates. According to Hernandez (2002) some analysts have estimated that 25 percent of the United States Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or $2.7 trillion, are either directly or indirectly impacted by El Nino when it occurs.

In 1998 El Nino caused had an estimated $25 billion effect on the United States economy. These impacts can be either good or bad, depending on the time of year and / or the industry. For example, a snowmobile retail company had sales that were down approximately 37 percent in the winter of 1997/1998. At the same time, department store sales were up 15 percent due to the high heat and people's desire, or need, to shop for new clothes (Hernandez, 2002). More often than not, the losses cannot be offset by gains in other area. The majority of El Nino losses around the globe come in the agricultural field.

Whether it be through loss of crops or a lack of fish in the ocean, the national economy and people will suffer because of a lack of income. The reason that El Nino has come forcefully into the spotlight recently is because the documentation and impact of El Nino from 1997-2000 is the strongest ever recorded. The amount of damage caused and visual evidence to support the phenomenon was in the daily news headlines. Research done by the University of Illinois show the wind and water temperate shift began around December 1996 and by August 1997 the changes could be seen and felt.

Examples included flooding along the coast of Chili in South America, a Marlin (large fish) caught near the coast of Washington state, dense smog over Indonesia, and very calm tropical storm / hurricane seasons in the Atlantic Ocean. Because of the advances in technology specifically for such an occurrence throughout the 1980's and 1990's, forecasters could accurately predict the winter weather six months prior. Due to these predictions, disaster preparations were made by federal and state governments, business, individuals, and insurance companies. Once the winter of 1997/1998 began, the results were just as expected. Record amounts of rain fell in California, which caused floods and mud slides.

The abnormally mild winter throughout the Midwest caused a lack of snow, which would later cause a drought in the summer (USGS, 1998). Scientists still have more unanswered questions than ever about the Southern Oscillation winds and their relationships to the rest of the planet. Better understanding and modeling ENSO events and forecasting their existence will save, and / or earn, economies around the world large amounts of money in the future. In a survey of investments made by the agricultural sector of the United States into El Nino forecasting and research, results showed those investments earned a 13 to 26 percent rate of return via benefits of the research. There will likely be scientists from now until the end of time studying this phenomenon. There is no way to change the way nature functions and virtually no way to alter all of its outcomes.

Who would imagine that this fairly simple concept of winds in the middle of the ocean changing direction could have such a global impact 500 years ago, now, and likely 500 years into the future.

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