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Video: What is El Niño?

July 10, 2023

AuthorsJames Goldie
Data and Digital Storytelling Lead, 360info

Suzannah Lyons
Senior Commissioning Editor, 360info

ContributorsKim Reid
Monash University

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00:00:01:07 - 00:00:29:22
Kim Reid
So El Niño And the flip side landing is collectively known as ENSO or the El Niño Southern Oscillation and its this coupled phenomena between the atmosphere and ocean. So what that means is the atmosphere and ocean are talking to each other and influencing the weather around the globe. And it's one of the biggest influences of weather patterns globally. And the Bureau of Meteorology won't actually declare an El Niño year unless they see a signal in both the ocean and the atmosphere.
00:00:29:24 - 00:00:54:19
Kim Reid
So during El Niño, there's typically warmer ocean temperatures over near South America and cooler ocean temperatures near Australia. And what this does is it weakens the winds that move from east to west across the equator. And this weakening of the winds sort of pushes this region of lots of rainfall and convection that's typically near Australia out towards the middle of the Pacific.
00:00:54:19 - 00:01:20:20
Kim Reid
And that's why in Australia, El Niño is typically associated with warmer than average and drier than average weather conditions. Places in Asia also typically get hotter weather, as we've seen in the last few months with strong heat waves in over Asia. The funny thing about El Niño is that it was actually discovered by Peruvian fishermen hundreds of years ago because they noticed that the warm ocean temperatures of the coast of South America was impacting their fishing.
00:01:20:22 - 00:01:49:20
Kim Reid
And so because there's less cold upwelling from the deep ocean and less nutrients rising to the surface, they actually would catch fewer fish. So it can have far ranging impacts not just on the weather, but on aquaculture as well. So scientists use what we call subseasonal-to-seasonal forecast models to try and predict El Niño events. And so these models are really looking at this time period from two weeks to nine months, which is quite a murky area.
00:01:49:20 - 00:02:08:15
Kim Reid
It's very difficult to forecast that far in advance because the atmosphere is what we call very chaotic. We can't really forecast the atmosphere that far in advance, but we can have an idea about what the ocean is doing. So that's why there's a lot of emphasis on the sea surface temperatures and what we call this Niño 3.4 region.
00:02:08:15 - 00:02:31:23
Kim Reid
So that's a box over the middle Pacific where scientists look at whether the ocean temperatures up the level above or below average. And once they're above about 0.5 °C if you're the US, NOAA, or if they're about 0.8 °C, if you're the Bureau, that's when they consider this to be an El Niño. So climate change is impacting the baseline.
00:02:31:23 - 00:02:53:01
Kim Reid
So when we justify an El Niño, we're looking at temperature anomalies. So because the ocean is hotter generally in order to get a 0.5 °C temperature anomaly, we actually need more heat than we previously needed. And so there's a lot of debate going on about whether we need to redefine our El Niño definitions to take into account climate change.

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Dr Kimberley Reid provides an explainer of the climatic phenomenon known as El Niño.

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Video: What is El Niño?

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