El Niño (Oceanography and Meteorology) From the child (i.e., the Christ child) The name of a southward-flowing ocean current off the coast of Peru causing an irregularly occurring flow of unusually warm surface water along the western coast of South America that is accompanied by abnormally high rainfall in usually arid areas and that prevents upwelling of nutrient-rich cold deep water causing a decline in the regional fish population. It typically results in a warm inshore current flowing along the coast of Ecuador and about every seven to ten years it extends southward down the coast of Peru with frequently devastating effects on weather, crops, and fishing (due to adverse effects on plankton). El Niño’s warm and nutrient-poor waters cause great damage to the fishing industry and also to the birds feeding there, which are an important source of guano. The climatic effects of large-scale El Niño disturbances also cause flooding and drought conditions over a wide area, sometimes extending as far as the southern Pacific Ocean, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Such disturbances have taken place in 1953, 1957-58, 1972-73, 1976, 1982-83, and 1992. It is also believed that this condition (El Niño Effect) has more far-reaching effects on climatological patterns in the Western Hemisphere and also influences storm patterns in the western Atlantic Ocean region (Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico). It has generally been found that the presence of El Niño tends to reduce hurricane activity while the presence of La Niña, or cool eastern Pacific waters, tends to increase hurricane activity. Also see Hurricane Forecasting.
Source: http://www.bvsde.paho.org/bvsacg/i/fulltext/dicciona/dicciona.pdf
Web site to visit: http://www.state.nv.us/cnr/ndwp/home.htm
Author of the Water Words Dictionary source of text: Gary A. Horton
If you are the author of the text above and you not agree to share your knowledge for teaching, research, scholarship (for fair use as indicated in the United States copyrigh low) please send us an e-mail and we will remove your text quickly. Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)
The information of medicine and health contained in the site are of a general nature and purpose which is purely informative and for this reason may not replace in any case, the council of a doctor or a qualified entity legally to the profession.
The following texts are the property of their respective authors and we thank them for giving us the opportunity to share for free to students, teachers and users of the Web their texts will used only for illustrative educational and scientific purposes only.
All the information in our site are given for nonprofit educational purposes
The information of medicine and health contained in the site are of a general nature and purpose which is purely informative and for this reason may not replace in any case, the council of a doctor or a qualified entity legally to the profession.
www.riassuntini.com