Scientific research on El Nino warm current

Meteorologists' research on El Nino still stayed in the late 1960s. They consulted the weather archives for more than 30 years since the Second World War and found that several major "El Niñ o" phenomena occurred during the year, and all of them had global weather anomalies. 1972 global weather anomalies are related to the particularly strong El Niñ o warm current that year. This year, the worst national drought occurred in China since the founding of New China. At the same time, serious floods have occurred in some countries and regions, such as Tunisia in Africa, which is once in 200 years, and Peru is the worst flood in 40 years. At the end of 1982, the El Niñ o warm current reappeared, and the sea water in the eastern Pacific near the equator increased abnormally, and the scope became larger and larger. Around Christmas, more than 1700 seabirds perched on Christmas Island disappeared. Then it rained heavily and flooded in Peru. By 1983, El Nino had spread all over the world, and abnormal weather appeared continuously in America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

According to the latest research by American scientists, the El Niñ o phenomenon may be caused by the eruption of underwater volcanic lava. Lava spews from the crustal fault at the bottom of the ocean, transferring huge heat to the Pacific ocean current near the equator, warming the sea water, and causing abnormal water temperature and ocean current direction in the East Pacific Ocean.

Researchers in potsdam institute for climate impact research, Germany, based on high-quality temperature data, put forward a new method, which can predict the occurrence of El Niñ o in time and accurately six months to one year in advance. The study was published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hans Joachim Schoenhuber, co-author of the study and director of the potsdam institute for climate impact research, said: "The key is to provide people in the affected areas with more early warning time to prepare and avoid the worst effects of some El Niñ o phenomena." The new method adopts the network analysis method in the frontier methodology of physics and mathematics. These data come from more than 200 stations since 1950s, which is very important for the interactive study of climate warming between remote stations in the Pacific Ocean.

According to this new method developed and tested by Schoenhuber, the forecast time can be advanced and the reliability can be improved. In fact, the new method correctly predicted that there was no El Niñ o event in 20 1 12 years.

When the El Niñ o phenomenon occurs, the sea water temperature in a large area of the equatorial eastern Pacific can be several degrees Celsius higher than normal. The rising water temperature in the vast Pacific Ocean has changed the traditional equatorial current and southeast trade wind, and changed the global atmospheric circulation pattern. The most direct phenomenon is the inverse correlation of sea level pressure between the equatorial western Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, that is, the Southern Oscillation (SO). During La Nina, the air pressure in the southeast Pacific increased obviously, while that in Indonesia and Australia weakened. During El Nino, the situation is just the opposite. This interaction and relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere is called "ENSO" in meteorology. This global climate oscillation is called ENSO cycle. This study mainly focuses on climate warming events. Generally speaking, the El Niñ o year is followed by the La Niñ a year.

Schoenhuber said: "It is not clear to what extent global warming caused by human greenhouse gases will affect the ENSO model. But the latter is often regarded as the so-called detonating element in the earth system, which means that to some extent, climate change may change suddenly. Judging from the past data of the earth, higher global average temperature may increase the oscillation amplitude, so correct prediction becomes more important. "