What actually is El Niño?
In the 1600s, fishers in Peru saw that every few years around Christmastime, the waters there warmed, and they caught fewer anchovies. They called this “El Niño” – the boy – after the Christ child.
In the early 20th century, the physicist Gilbert Walker noticed that the prevailing low atmospheric pressure and rainy weather over the western Pacific and dry, high pressure over the eastern Pacific periodically flipped. But it wasn’t until 1969 that meteorologist Jacob Bjerknes linked the two, showing that swells of warm water in the Pacific Ocean end up wreaking havoc on weather across the globe.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2590080-explainer-what-is-el-nino/
