[학생기자 코너]El Nino

Chaemin Jang (Mclean HS, 10th)

“It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” said my older sister last weekend while skating at the Rockefeller Center with only a t-shirt on. Words from a random high school junior might not be the most scientifically authoritative, but she is not wrong this time. In 2015, one of the most powerful El Nino hit the globe, resulting in an average of 70 degrees Fahrenheit during Christmas season along the East Coast, deadly storms in the South, and near-record floods in the Midwest.

El Nino, meaning “the boy,” or “Christ Child,” is a complex series of climatic changes that affects the equatorial Pacific region. Triggered by the weakening or reversal of Pacific winds, El Nino causes a warming of the Central and Eastern Pacific Ocean, mainly along the equator. Although the El Nino of 2015 has been associated with several floods and droughts in South America, we “may not have seen the peak of this El Nino,” as said by Josh Wills, a project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Occurring every six or seven years, El Nino causes a rise in average global surface temperature, and contributes about a quarter of the total temperature increase to the global warming phenomenon. The most frequently asked question regarding the El Nino is, “Is its frequency and severity changing with respect to recent natural variability?” According to Kim Cobb, the Georgia Institute of Technology climate scientist, “The answer is yes, tentatively so.” Man-made global warming, strengthened by the contribution of the El Nino, is expected to push temperatures towards record levels in 2016. With this continuing trend, it is likely that by the end of 2016, the world will be able to see three record years in a row for global temperatures. Although it is unlikely that this trend will continue on indefinitely even after the massive touch of the El Nino, this incidence serves as an epitome of how global warming can combine with the small natural fluctuations such as the El Nino to push the global temperature up to an unprecedented level of warmth.
Without urgent action to prevent further damages, the El Nino is forecasted to force millions of people into poverty and sickness. Last weekend, the aid agency Oxfam International expressed their concern in a press release mentioning how “The El Nino weather system could leave tens of millions of people facing hunger, water shortages and disease next year if early action isn’t taken to prepare vulnerable people from its effects.”

As discussed previously, the synergy effect of record-breaking natural disasters along with severe global warming could bring disastrous effects to the Earth. With global temperatures setting records in three consecutive years, it is a given that the El Nino will intensify as we approach 2020. This phenomenon should not be dismissed as minor, and a proper response to this fluctuation is necessary in order to avoid both economic losses and high death rates. As a high school junior might say, after all, it doesn’t feel like Christmas.