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Science 19 February 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5405, pp. 1108 - 1109
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5405.1108
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CLIMATE CHANGE:
Big El Niños Ride the Back of Slower Climate Change

Richard A. Kerr

Climate modelers successfully anticipated the arrival of the 1997 El Niño, but they were blind-sided by its intensity. Now, by deconstructing the symphony of longer-term climatic cycles that play out in the Pacific Ocean, researchers have found clues to why this event and the powerful El Niño of 1982-83 were so severe. Other, slower cycles of ocean warming and cooling have tended to be at or near their peaks--in some cases unusually high peaks--since the 1970s. By preheating the Pacific, they boosted the intensity of the El Niños.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Impacts of a Global Climate Cycle on Population Dynamics of a Migratory Songbird.
T. S. Sillett, R. T. Holmes, and T. W. Sherry (2000)
Science 288, 2040-2042
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