El Nino Essay Research Paper Economical Effects

El Nino Essay, Research Paper

Economical Effects of El Nino El Nino is a warm coastal current that flows south along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru (Wyrtki). El Nino is a Spanish term meaning “the child.” The name refers to the Christ child because it usually begins around Christmas and ends around Easter (Cane). El Nino has recurred about twenty four times in the last century (Erickson). It is first recorded as far back as the early 1500’s and returns on average of once every four years (Cane). El Nino causes much destruction in the short time it lasts. This system has been known to cause forest fires, typhoons, torrential rains, unusually powerful hurricanes, flash floods, severe droughts, and freak snow storms (Nash). The 1982 El Nino is thought to have triggered the 1982 eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico. The 1982-1983 El Nino also caused so much destruction that the weather-related damage estimated at more than $6.5 billion. A typhoon named Iwa, caused by El Nino, that hit the Hawaiian Islands in November, 19823 caused $2 million in damages (Erickson). El Nino is one of the strongest weather systems known to man and can destroy lives and production, both agriculturally and economically, with very little warning at all. When a major El Nino ocean warming occurs, the barometric pressure over vast areas of the southeast Pacific falls, while the pressure in Indonesia and northern Australia rises. When El Nino ends, the pressure difference between these two areas swings in the opposite direction, creating a mass seesawing of atmospheric pressure. This phenomenon is called the Southern Oscillation. The Southern Oscillation is related to large-scale changes in atmospheric circulation over the tropical Pacific and Indian oceans. When the Southern Oscillation index is low, summer monsoon rains in India fail, and when the index is high, the rains are abundant (Erickson). An irregular oscillation of atmospheric mass occurs between the Indonesian low pressure system, and the Easter Island high pressure system. This oscillation can last for several years (Wyrtki). El Nino has an immense effect on the economy in many ways. From the 1982-1983 El Nino, weather related damage around the Pacific rim estimated at more than $6.5 billion (Erickson). El Nino has caused destructive flooding, drought in the West Pacific, and is sometimes associated with devastating brush fires in Australia (TAO). Of the past twenty-eight El Nino’s twenty-two have been associated with below normal rainfall in south east Africa. The Souther Oscillation and El Nino both have significant effects on state of weather and climate almost everywhere. The 1982-1983 El Nino caused destructive winds, tides, flooding, and landslides in California, caused more than $300 million in property damages, and over 10,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes (Erickson). Due to it’s size and strength, El Nino has been the focus of international attention and millions of dollars in research (Wood). As a result of the 1982-1983 El Nino, it caused a typhoon, named Iwa in the Hawaiin Islands. Iwa struck in November of 1982, and caused around $200,000,000 in damages. In Peru, El Nino has caused torrential rain fall, resulting in flooding of the once dust-dry hillsides of the Peruvian coast (Carson). El Nino has also generated warm surface waters and biological disturbances that extended southward to Chile and northward to British Columbia (Wyrtki). As for farmers in Southern Africa, they have suffered from loss of water, crop failures, and widespread hunger, consequently more than 1,000,000 people faced possible famine (Erickson). Storms following altered tracks of El Nino disrupt normal patterns of wet and dry weather as far away as Africa (Williams). El Nino has been known to provoke heavy rains in the usually dry southwest and fires in the drought stricken rain forests of Malaysia (Newshour Forum). El Nino can and has prompted catastrophic disturbances in weather with very short advanced notice. Due to El Nino there are different cycles in the temperature, thus creating cold years and warm years. Farmers do not like the cold years because they cause drought and crop failures, but these years are welcomed by fishermen. The cold years come on the heels of strong El Nino years. Peruvians have reason to be concerned not only about El Nino events, but about both extremes, cold and warm years, of the El Nino cycle. Warm years tend to be unfavorable for fishing and some have been marked by the damaging floods along the coastal plain and in the Western Andean foothills in the northern part of the country (TAO). During El Nino years, the equatorial easterly winds reverse and blow from the west. The wind then drags on the oceans surface in the opposite direction, resulting in major changes in the equatorial current system. The changing of the storms location alters jet stream winds that steer storms. In winter of 1982-1983, intensification of Pacific jet stream reached record proportions (Erickson). Massive warming in the water, as a result of El Nino, has killed many fish and sea birds by preventing nutrient-rich cold waters from rising to the surface (Cane). Cold water which is high in its levels of nutrients, supports high levels of primary productivity, diverse marine ecosystems, and major fisheries (TAO). El Nino has caused drastic decrease in populations of fish eggs and larvae, and sharp drops in the catches of commercial fish. Du