El Niño Essay

425 Words2 Pages
The El Niño Factor by Carl Zimmer in an article that describes El Niño and La Niña and their effects and causes. The article tells how El Niño and La Niña affect Water Temperature. Scientists have been studying El Niño because it has been causing disasters all over the world for many, many years. Scientists hope to be able to predict when El Niño will occur. The article talks about how El Niño affects people, it can cause diseases and food shortages as just two examples. The article goes on to discuss how people can effect El Niño. When El Niño occurs the oceans and the atmosphere shift which causes trade winds and warm water to move from west to east, La Niña is just the opposite. Scientists are unsure what causes El Niño and La Niña but Climatologists fear that rising air and water temperatures due in part to global warming will only increase the already drastic devastative power of El Niño. It is also a possibility that there will be a “permanent” El Niño in the future. The article is appropriate for the class to read at this time because it pertains to what we have discussed in class. The articles mentions effects El Niño and La Niña have effected people in the past and we have discussed how El Niño may effect people. We talked about the trade winds associated with El Niño and the change in water temperature. Warm water in the pacific is usually pushed to the west but during El Niño the warm water stays near the Northwestern coasts of South America which can cause damages in fishing and changes in weather pattern across the world. The article was very well written and had many examples and explanations to help the average reader to understand the results of both La Niña and El Niño. I don’t like the fact that the article wasn’t direct with informing the reader what El Niño and La Niña actually are; I believe that information was too subtle and could have
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