EL NIÑO is part of a wider climate system called El Niño Southern Oscillation, in which the Pacific Ocean and the atmosphere above it influence each other. This interaction drives the warming and cooling of the equatorial Pacific, which in turn affects the weather elsewhere in the world.
The process starts with surface water, propelled westward across the ocean by trade winds and heated by the sun as it travels, running into the Philippines, the Malay Archipelago and New Guinea. Over the course of between two and seven years the pool of warm water thus created grows into something with an area of about 12m km{+2} (4.6m square miles). Balmy, humid air rises from the pool, cooling and shedding rain as it does so, as part of a phenomenon called the Walker circulation (see chart). Some of this air travels west, where it irrigates Indonesia with its precipitation. Some travels east, discharging its load on the Pacific, and then sinks back to the surface near the coast of South America, replacing the air that has travelled west as the trade winds.
Below the surface things are happening, too. The movement of warm water towards...
from The Economist: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1HXVSTk
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