Coral records have shown El Niño events have grown almost 40% stronger in recent decades than before pre-industrial times. Modern events are now stronger than anything seen in the preceding thousand years.
New research shows that El Niño events now are stronger than before pre-industrial times. Researchers from the University of Michigan looked at living coral samples and ancient coral boulders from the Galápagos Islands to reconstruct a thousand years of El Niño history. Lead author Julia Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan says, “We don’t see a time in the past where El Niños have been as strong as today, and we show that the strength of El Niño changes in parallel with the warming of global temperature. Our findings tell us that the big El Niño events of the last 40 years are not normal in the context of the last thousand years.”
El Niño
El Niño is a natural climate cycle that occurs every few years where the tropical Pacific warms above its average. During neutral conditions, trade winds push warm water west from South America to Australia. These winds weaken under El Niño, keeping the warm water east.
Heavy rain moves away from Indonesia to the Central Pacific, leading to drought in the Western Pacific. This further weakens the trade winds, allowing for the El Niño event to remain in palce for a year or two at a time. Effects from El Niño can be felt across the planet. In the US, storm tracks shift south,
Original Record.
This archived record authored by ‘Kathryn Davies’ at ‘METEORED (Your Weather)’ was recovered from data set:
English
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