What is El niño?

Learn more about El niño

by | Aug 8, 2019 | Reading, Vocabulary, Writing

By definition, El Niñoa refers to change in the weather that happens every three to seven years, caused by a rise in the temperature of a large area of the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America. El Niño has severe effects on the weather in many parts of the world, and can cause drought in some places and heavy rain and violent storms in other places.

El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO in short) is a term describing a natural event that takes place in the Pacific Ocean. It is also called El Niño and La Niña. In Spanish, they mean the “little boy” and the “little girl”.

El Niño is when the seawater temperature rises in surface waters (sea level) of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Every two to five years the Pacific Ocean has an event called El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This is a weak, warm current that starts every year around Christmas time along the coast of Ecuador and Peru. It lasts for only a few weeks to a month or more. Every three to seven years, an El Niño event may last for many months. This can change the weather and have important buy priligy online in Australia effects on economies around the world. Australia and Southeast Asia can have droughts but the deserts of Peru have very heavy rainfall. East Africa can have both. In a La Nina event, the weather patterns are reversed.

Read more about this phenomenon on the Simple Wikipedia: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Niño–Southern_Oscillation

Footnote: El Niñoa means ‘the (Christ) child’ in the Spanish language, because of the occurrence near Christmas.

 

About the Author

About the Author

CEO and Co-founder of Juice Academy

Mehdi Safavi is a Cambridge certified English teacher (CELTA Grade A), IDP-trained IELTS expert, Sussex Downs College TESOL with 17+ years of teaching & teacher training experience. More about him →

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