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El Niño and La Niña: Their Impact on the Environment
El Niño and La Niña: Their Impact on the Environment
We know that there are many anthropogenic forcings on the climate, particularly the volume of carbon and greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere as a part of our everyday lives. Yet there are a number of natural processes that affect local weather, regional climate and global conditions. Some effects on our climate are a result of fluctuations and anomalies in the complex water conveyor belts of the ocean currents of the world. These fluctuations are known as “oscillations” and the two best-known oscillations are El Niño and La Niña (1) (2).

The latter is the opposite of the former and make up an oscillation known as ENSO. Understanding them requires knowledge of a broad range of data from multiple disciplines. Typically, researchers who understand the processes and study their causes and effects have post-graduate degrees in such disciplines as oceanography, geography, climatology and meteorology. The phenomena and the data extrapolated from them, have applications for palaeoclimatology (the study of climate in the past), anthropology, palaeobotany and archaeology, particularly in what we can extrapolate from the changes to tree ring data (dendrochronology) (3).

Oscillations occur naturally in oceans all across the world; some have a limited impact on the regional weather and wider climate, and some have a much greater impact (4). El Niño and La Niña are examples of oscillations that have a greater impact on our climate with effects that are perhaps surprisingly felt all over the globe (5). In economies that are dependent on certain weather conditions occurring regularly and on time (annual summer rainfall, spring ice melt etc), erratic oscillations can cause problems in these areas leading to drought. Knock on effects can lead to fish migrations and economic hardship for areas that rely on fish stocks. Marginal areas suffer or thrive depending on the effects of El Niño and La Niña leading to further knock on effects elsewhere (4).
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El Niño and La Niña: What Are They?
Both El Niño and La Niña are opposite effects of the same phenomenon: the ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation). Both are an oscillation in the temper