El-nino
There's trouble in the air. Specifically, in the west coast of the Americas, where the sea surface has been heated to abnormal extremes by an ominous, intermittent flood of hot water called . The term. "," which means "the child," was originally in reference to a warm current arriving annually during the Christmas season off the coast of Peru and Ecuador. The term was later restricted to the particularly strong periodic warmings that disrupt the local fish and bird populations, and extend westward across the equatorial Pacific Ocean to near the date line. What is an ? is the warming of the Pacific waters that is brought about from time to time by naturally occurring oscillations in ...
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surface is about 1/2 meter higher at Indonesia than at Ecuador. The sea surface temperature is about 8 degrees C higher in the west, with cool termperatures off South America, dut to an upwelling of cold water from deeper levels. This cold water is nutrient-rich, supporting high levels of primary productivity, diverse marine ecosystems, and major fisheries. Rainfall is found in rising air over the warmest water, and the east Pacific is relatively dry. Warming of the Pacific waters is not the only thing is to be blames for. The current warming has been so strong, is has added noticeable zip to atmospheric winds and slowed Earth's spin, suggest scientists who track the planet's rotation. exert these profound effects by speeding up the eastward movement of the atmosphere, relative to the solid body of te planet. The change shows up in the analyses of the atmosphere's angular momentum-a property comparable to the momentum of a spinning tire. "From mid-March through late ...
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a balmy trend that has made this decade the hottest in more than a century of temperature data. "All of us are pretty happy with the agreement of the different methods," says Thomas R. Karl of the National Climate Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, NC. "There are differences [among the teams' findings], but they are small" (Karl 38). Earth's land and ocean surface last year was 0.42 degrees C warmer than the long-term average of 16.5 degrees C for the reference period 1961 through 1990, says Karl. The NCDC team analysed data from more than 5,000 land stations and from water temperature reading collected by satellite sensors, buoys, and ships. 1997 came in almost a tenth of a degree ...
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El-nino. (2008, January 20). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/El-nino/77784
"El-nino." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 20 Jan. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/El-nino/77784>
"El-nino." Essayworld.com. January 20, 2008. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/El-nino/77784.
"El-nino." Essayworld.com. January 20, 2008. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/El-nino/77784.
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