El Nino La Nina And The Southern Oscillation

Comprehensive and up-to-date information on Earth’s most dominant year-to-year climate variation The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific Ocean has major worldwide social and economic consequences through its global scale effects on atmospheric and oceanic circulation, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and other natural systems. Ongoing climate change is projected to significantly alter ENSO's dynamics and impacts. El Niño Southern Oscillation in a Changing Climate presents the latest theories, models, and observations, and explores the challenges of forecasting ENSO as the climate continues to change. Volume highlights include: Historical background on ENSO and its societal consequences Review of key El Niño (ENSO warm phase) and La Niña (ENSO cold phase) characteristics Mathematical description of the underlying physical processes that generate ENSO variations Conceptual framework for understanding ENSO changes on decadal and longer time scales, including the response to greenhouse gas forcing ENSO impacts on extreme ocean, weather, and climate events, including tropical cyclones, and how ENSO affects fisheries and the global carbon cycle Advances in modeling, paleo-reconstructions, and operational climate forecasting Future projections of ENSO and its impacts Factors influencing ENSO events, such as inter-basin climate interactions and volcanic eruptions The American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity. Its publications disseminate scientific knowledge and provide resources for researchers, students, and professionals. Find out more about this book from this Q&A with the editors.

El Nino and the Southern Oscillation is by far the most striking phenomenon caused by the interplay of ocean and atmosphere. It can be explained neither in strictly oceanographic nor strictly meteorological terms. This volume provides a brief history of the subject, summarizes the oceanographic and meteorological observations and theories, and discusses the recent advances in computer modeling studies of the phenomenon. Includes a comprehensive and up-to-date research survey Discusses in detail sophisticated computer models Provides a clear exposition of the major problems which prevent more accurate predictions of El Nino

Coral reefs are the largest landforms built by plants and animals. Their study therefore incorporates a wide range of disciplines. This encyclopedia approaches coral reefs from an earth science perspective, concentrating especially on modern reefs. Currently coral reefs are under high stress, most prominently from climate change with changes to water temperature, sea level and ocean acidification particularly damaging. Modern reefs have evolved through the massive environmental changes of the Quaternary with long periods of exposure during glacially lowered sea level periods and short periods of interglacial growth. The entries in this encyclopedia condense the large amount of work carried out since Charles Darwin first attempted to understand reef evolution. Leading authorities from many countries have contributed to the entries covering areas of geology, geography and ecology, providing comprehensive access to the most up-to-date research on the structure, form and processes operating on Quaternary coral reefs.

This volume is based on a meeting of researchers, forecasters, and users of La Nina forecasts, at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research. La Nina results from air-sea interaction that reduces the surface seatemperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, affecting global weather patterns. While people around the globe have become familiar with El Nino - a large-scale warming of surface water that expands to cover the tropics - and its impacts, its counterpart, La Nina, is not so well known. Researchers at this La Nina Summit indicated that La Nina events can be as devastating as those of El Nino. The overriding purpose of the summit was to draw attention to the importance of improving understanding of the La Nina phenomenon and what societies need to know in order to prepare for La Nina's impacts.

Although we are seeing more weather and climate extremes, individual extreme events are very diverse and generalization of trends is difficult. For example, mid-latitude and subtropical climate extremes such as heat waves, hurricanes and droughts have increased, and could have been caused by processes including arctic amplification, jet stream meandering, and tropical expansion. This volume documents various climate extreme events and associated changes that have been analyzed through diagnostics, modeling, and statistical approaches. The identification of patterns and mechanisms can aid the prediction of future extreme events. Volume highlights include: Compilation of processes and mechanisms unique to individual weather and climate extreme events Discussion of climate model performance in terms of simulating high-impact weather and climate extremes Summary of various existing theories, including controversial ones, on how climate extremes will continue to become stronger and more frequent Climate Extremes: Patterns and Mechanisms is a valuable resource for scientists and graduate students in the fields of geophysics, climate physics, natural hazards, and environmental science. Read an interview with the editors to find out more: https://eos.org/editors-vox/how-does-changing-climate-bring-more-extreme-events

The term El Niño (Spanish for "the Christ Child") was originally used by fishermen along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru to refer to a warm ocean current that typically appears around Christmastime and lasts for several months. Fish are less abundant during these warm intervals, yet in some years, however, the water is especially warm and the break in the fishing season persists into May or even June. El Niño also brings heavy rains. During the past 40 years, nine El Niños have affected the South American coast. Most of them raised water temperatures not only along the coast, but also at the Galapagos islands and in a belt stretching 5000 miles across the equatorial Pacific. The weaker events raised sea temperatures only by one to two degrees Fahrenheit, but the strong ones, like the El Niño of 1982-83, left an imprint, not only upon the local weather and marine life, but also on climatic conditions around the globe. This book includes a detailed overview and bibliography with complete title, author and subject indexes.

This book documents and examines the state of health of coral reefs in the eastern tropical Pacific region. It touches on the occurrence of coral reefs in the waters of surrounding countries, and it explores their biogeography, biodiversity and condition relative to the El Niño southern oscillation and human impacts. Additionally contained within is a field that presents information on many of the species presented in the preceding chapters.

Cesar Caviedes provides a comprehensive historical account of El Nino, the fascinating and disruptive weather phenomenon that has affected weather cycles all over the globe for thousands of years. Combining scientific accuracy with readable presentation, he brings together all existing information, references and clues about past El Nino occurrences and their impact on political, military, social, economic and environmental history. This sweeping demonstration of the impact of climatic fluctuation on human history should be fascinating to the scientific community as well as to the general public.

The book examines potentially important factors that may have affected the Hadley and Walker Circulations and evaluates changes in the Hadley Circulation and the monsoons as simulated by coupled models of past climate conditions, and predicted future conditions under an enhanced greenhouse effect. This book is meant to serve as a fundamental reference work for current and future researchers, graduate students in the atmospheric sciences and geosciences, and climate specialists involved in interdisciplinary research.