Most people, even those who do not know Spanish, are familiar with the terms El Nino and La Nina. The first, of course, means boy or the boy child. The later means girl. Over the past twenty years or so, they both have become more commonly associated with weather phenomenon. Most people are quit familiar with El Nino, but not as many have heard of his counterpart, La Nina. What are the similarities and differences between the two?
Besides having a Spanish name, what do the two have in common? Both El Nino and La Nina are weather occurrences that occur at equal intervals from three to seven years apart. Both of these weather patterns have their beginnings in the equatorial Pacific. Both of these events are connected with variances in ocean water temperatures. Both El Nino and La Nina are being seen at an ever increasing rate due to environmental changes, including desalinization of the oceans and global warming. Although El Nino’s are more frequent, every few years La Nina crops up. With global warming, there will be more El Nino’s versus his counterpart, La Nina. This will be explained later on. Why a man always has the say, no one knows, but this is even the case in weather. A strong El Nino is an indicator that a La Nina is soon to follow. (www.elnino.noaa.gov.) (www.elnina.noaa.gov)
Now that we understand how they are similar , how are they different? El Nino occurs when the surface ocean temperature rises above .5 degrees Celsius of what is normal. The most frequent El Nino began in September of 2006 and ran until the early months of 2007. As mentioned previously, global warming has increased the events of El Nino’s because the oceans are warming due to carbon gases in the atmosphere. This weather event usually signals an increase in hurricanes. Some suspect that this year’s hurricane season has been so mild because the latest El Nino was minor compared to previous ones. Probably the worst El Nino in recent memory fell in the fall and winter of 1997. The winters that year were especially harsh and the impending summer and hurricane seasons were severe.(www.elnino.noaa.gov)
In contrast, La Nina occurs when the surface temperature falls below .5 degrees Celsius of the normal water temperature. We are currently in a mild La Nina that began in June of 2007. At this time, the waters in the Central and Eastern Pacific are colder than normal. While this use to be a more frequent occurrence, as the earth warms we are seeing fewer and fewer La Nina’s. La Nina’s are known to create worse drought conditions, and this might explain why much of the southern United States is suffering the worst droughts in their history. (www.physicalgeography.net/elninolanina)
Weather has always amazed me, as it is something we can study, but it is usually out of our control. As time progresses, maybe we can learn how to control our environment better. However, our first responsibility is to learn to take care of Mother Earth so occurrences like El Nino and La Nina are as infrequent as they use to be.
