scholarly journals El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Health: An Overview for Climate and Health Researchers

Author(s):  
Glenn McGregor ◽  
Kris Ebi

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important of mode of climatic variability that through altering climate patterns exerts a discernible impact on ecosystems and society. For this reason, ENSO has attracted much interest in the climate and health science community with many analysts investigating ENSO health links through considering the degree of dependency of the incidence of a range of climate diseases on the occurrence of El Niño events. Because of the mounting interest in the relationship between ENSO as a major mode of climatic variability and health this paper presents an overview of the basic characteristics of the ENSO phenomenon and its climate impacts, discusses the use of ENSO indices in climate and health research and outlines the present understanding of ENSO health associations. Also touched upon are ENSO-based seasonal health forecasting and the possible impacts of climate change on ENSO and the implications this holds for future assessments of ENSO health associations. The review concludes that there is still some way to go before a thorough understanding of the association between ENSO and health is achieved with a need to move beyond analyses undertaken through a purely statistical lens with due acknowledgement that ENSO as a complex non-canonical phenomenon and that simple ENSO health associations should not be expected.

Atmosphere ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (7) ◽  
pp. 282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn McGregor ◽  
Kristie Ebi

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important mode of climatic variability that exerts a discernible impact on ecosystems and society through alterations in climate patterns. For this reason, ENSO has attracted much interest in the climate and health science community, with many analysts investigating ENSO health links through considering the degree of dependency of the incidence of a range of climate diseases on the occurrence of El Niño events. Because of the mounting interest in the relationship between ENSO as a major mode of climatic variability and health, this paper presents an overview of the basic characteristics of the ENSO phenomenon and its climate impacts, discusses the use of ENSO indices in climate and health research, and outlines the present understanding of ENSO health associations. Also touched upon are ENSO-based seasonal health forecasting and the possible impacts of climate change on ENSO and the implications this holds for future assessments of ENSO health associations. The review concludes that there is still some way to go before a thorough understanding of the association between ENSO and health is achieved, with a need to move beyond analyses undertaken through a purely statistical lens, with due acknowledgement that ENSO is a complex non-canonical phenomenon, and that simple ENSO health associations should not be expected.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (11) ◽  
pp. 4679-4695 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Geng ◽  
Wenjun Zhang ◽  
Fei-Fei Jin ◽  
Malte F. Stuecker ◽  
Aaron F. Z. Levine

AbstractRecent studies demonstrated the existence of a conspicuous atmospheric combination mode (C-mode) originating from nonlinear interactions between El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Pacific warm pool annual cycle (AC). Here we find that the C-mode exhibits prominent decadal amplitude variations during the ENSO decaying boreal spring season. It is revealed that the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO) can largely explain this waxing and waning in amplitude. A robust positive correlation between ENSO and the C-mode is detected during a negative AMO phase but not during a positive phase. Similar results can also be found in the relationship of ENSO with 1) the western North Pacific (WNP) anticyclone and 2) spring precipitation over southern China, both of which are closely associated with the C-mode. We suggest that ENSO property changes due to an AMO modulation play a crucial role in determining these decadal shifts. During a positive AMO phase, ENSO events are distinctly weaker than those in an AMO negative phase. In addition, El Niño events concurrent with a positive AMO phase tend to exhibit a westward-shifted sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly pattern. These SST characteristics during the positive AMO phase are both not conducive to the development of the meridionally asymmetric C-mode atmospheric circulation pattern and thus reduce the ENSO/C-mode correlation on decadal time scales. These observations can be realistically reproduced by a coupled general circulation model (CGCM) experiment in which North Atlantic SSTs are nudged to reproduce a 50-yr sinusoidally varying AMO evolution. Our conclusion carries important implications for understanding seasonally modulated ENSO dynamics and multiscale climate impacts over East Asia.


Agrometeoros ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronaldo Matzenauer ◽  
Bernadete Radin ◽  
Alberto Cargnelutti Filho

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a relação entre o fenômeno El Niño Oscilação Sul - ENOS e o rendimento de grãos de soja e de milho no Rio Grande do Sul e verificar a hipótese de que os eventos El Niño são favoráveis e os eventos La Niña são prejudiciais ao rendimento de grãos das culturas. Foram utilizados dados de rendimento de grãos dos anos agrícolas de 1974/75 a 2016/17, e relacionados com as ocorrências de eventos ENOS. Foram analisados os dados de rendimento observados na colheita e os dados estimados com a remoção da tendência tecnológica. Os resultados mostraram que não houve diferença significativa do rendimento médio de grãos de soja e de milho na comparação entre os eventos ENOS. Palavras-chave: El Niño, La Niña, safras agrícolas. Abstract – The objective of this work was to evaluate the relationship between the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon with the grain yield of soybean and maize in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil and to verify the hypothesis that the El Niño events are favorable and the La Niña events are harmful to the culture’s grain yields. Were used data from the agricultural years of 1974/75 to 2016/17, and related to the occurrence of ENOS events. We analyzed income data observed at harvest and estimated data with technological tendency was removed. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the average yield of soybeans and corn in the comparison between events.


Author(s):  
Mauricio Barcellos ALMEIDA ◽  
Renata Abrantes BARACHO

Within the realm of Information Science, information retrieval is a seminal issue. Knowledge organization systems are instruments that organize knowledge by connecting concepts through semantic relations for purposes of information retrieval. One of the most important of these semantic relations is the so-called part-whole relation. In this paper, we revisit some peculiarities of part-whole relations that are often overlooked by the Information Science community. In order to do this, we provide a theoretical investigation of two perspectives used to explain the notion of parts and wholes: a formal perspective, which is based on the philosophical study usually called mereology; a non-formal perspective, which is based on the linguistic study about a relation called meronym. We discuss the relationship between these perspectives through the issue of transitivity, which is an important property of part-whole relations for information retrieval. We find that these perspectives, although distinguished, are somehow complementary. The results of our analysis suggest that the choice for either a formal or a non-formal perspective could be based on a pragmatic criterion in the scope of development of knowledge organization systems. We conclude by offering some considerations correlating two main sorts of these systems, namely ontologies and thesauri.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (ICON-Suppl) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fivzia Herekar ◽  
Sundus Iftikhar ◽  
Ahsana Nazish ◽  
Sabeen Rehman

Background and Objective: Malaria is an arthropod-borne infectious disease transmitted by the mosquito Anopheles and claims millions of lives globally every year. Reasons for failure to eradicate this disease are multifactorial. The seasonality of the malaria is principally determined by climatic factors conducive for breeding of the vector. We aimed to study the relationship between climatic variability and the seasonality of malaria over an eight-year duration. Methods: This was a retrospective medical chart review of 8,844 confirmed cases of malaria which presented to The Indus Hospital, Karachi from January 2008 to November 2015. Cases were plotted against meteorological data for Karachi to elicit monthly variation. Results: A secular incline and seasonality in malaria cases over the duration of 8 years was seen. More cases were reported in the summer, rainy season compared with the other three seasons in each year. There was significant association with specific climate variables such as temperature, moisture, and humidity. Conclusion: There is a marked seasonal variation of malaria in Karachi, influenced by various environmental factors. Identification of the ‘the concentrated period’ of malaria can be helpful for policymakers to deploy malaria control interventions. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.ICON-Suppl.1712 How to cite this:Herekar F, Iftikhar S, Nazish A, Rehman S. Malaria and the climate in Karachi: An eight year review. Pak J Med Sci. Special Supplement ICON 2020. 2020;36(1):S33-S37. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.ICON-Suppl.1712 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Author(s):  
Tarun Reddy Katapally

UNSTRUCTURED Citizen science enables citizens to actively contribute to all aspects of the research process, from conceptualization and data collection, to knowledge translation and evaluation. Citizen science is gradually emerging as a pertinent approach in population health research. Given that citizen science has intrinsic links with community-based research, where participatory action drives the research agenda, these two approaches could be integrated to address complex population health issues. Community-based participatory research has a strong record of application across multiple disciplines and sectors to address health inequities. Citizen science can use the structure of community-based participatory research to take local approaches of problem solving to a global scale, because citizen science emerged through individual environmental activism that is not limited by geography. This synergy has significant implications for population health research if combined with systems science, which can offer theoretical and methodological strength to citizen science and community-based participatory research. Systems science applies a holistic perspective to understand the complex mechanisms underlying causal relationships within and between systems, as it goes beyond linear relationships by utilizing big data–driven advanced computational models. However, to truly integrate citizen science, community-based participatory research, and systems science, it is time to realize the power of ubiquitous digital tools, such as smartphones, for connecting us all and providing big data. Smartphones have the potential to not only create equity by providing a voice to disenfranchised citizens but smartphone-based apps also have the reach and power to source big data to inform policies. An imminent challenge in legitimizing citizen science is minimizing bias, which can be achieved by standardizing methods and enhancing data quality—a rigorous process that requires researchers to collaborate with citizen scientists utilizing the principles of community-based participatory research action. This study advances SMART, an evidence-based framework that integrates citizen science, community-based participatory research, and systems science through ubiquitous tools by addressing core challenges such as citizen engagement, data management, and internet inequity to legitimize this integration.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1096 ◽  
pp. 280-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Fu ◽  
Bi You Peng ◽  
Bin Xie ◽  
Yi Gen Ye

In order to improve the microstructure evolution modeling of dynamic recrystallization (DRX) in agreement with physical experiment, a modified Monte-Carlo (MC) Potts model for simulating DRX process was proposed in this paper under the consideration of the inhomogeneous stored energy distribution related to grain sizes, the nucleation criteria related to critical dislocation density, the site energy change related to grain preferred-growth, the combination of macroscopic thermo-mechanical parameters and microscopic material parameters, and the relationship between MC calculation steps and real DRX time. The results show that the modified model can better simulate the basic characteristics of dynamic recrystallization of metallic materials during forging, which the recrystallized grains nucleate mainly in the deformed regions with high stored energy and preferentially grow up by merging adjacent deformed grains with high stored energy.


The Advisor ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Una L. DeChellis

Abstract Both the literature and personal experience show that attrition from prerequisite science courses for the health professions is significant. To examine one possible reason for that attrition, a study was designed to examine the relationship between the teaching approaches employed by college-level anatomy and physiology (A&P) instructors and the learning preferences of first-year health science (FYHS) students. Students and instructors of a first-year Anatomy and Physiology course at a small, private four year college in the Northeast participated in a combined quantitative and qualitative research protocol. Results showed that instructors’ teaching approaches met the participating FYHS students’ learning preferences in some areas but not all. The findings suggest that addressing the gap between FYHS students’ learning preferences and the teaching approaches of A&P instructors could lead to more successful academic outcomes.


Author(s):  
Lino Naranjo Díaz

Almost all the studies performed during the past century have shown that drought is not the result of a single cause. Instead, it is the result of many factors varying in nature and scales. For this reason, researchers have been focusing their studies on the components of the climate system to explain a link between patterns (regional and global) of climatic variability and drought. Some drought patterns tend to recur frequently, particularly in the tropics. One such pattern is the El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This chapter explains the main characteristics of the ENSO and its data forms, and how this phenomenon is related to the occurrence of drought in the world regions. Originally, the name El Niño was coined in the late 1800s by fishermen along the coast of Peru to refer to a seasonal invasion of south-flowing warm currents of the ocean that displaced the north-flowing cold currents in which they normally fished. The invasion of warm water disrupts both the marine food chain and the economies of coastal communities that are based on fishing and related industries. Because the phenomenon peaks around the Christmas season, the fishermen who first observed it named it “El Niño” (“the Christ Child”). In recent decades, scientists have recognized that El Niño is linked with other shifts in global weather patterns (Bjerknes, 1969; Wyrtki, 1975; Alexander, 1992; Trenberth, 1995; Nicholson and Kim, 1997). The recurring period of El Niño varies from two to seven years. The intensity and duration of the event vary too and are hard to predict. Typically, the duration of El Niño ranges from 14 to 22 months, but it can also be much longer or shorter. El Niño often begins early in the year and peaks in the following boreal winter. Although most El Niño events have many features in common, no two events are exactly the same. The presence of El Niño events during historical periods can be detected using climatic data interpreted from the tree ring analysis, sediment or ice cores, coral reef samples, and even historical accounts from early settlers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Wayan Mita Restitiasih ◽  
I Ketut Sukarasa ◽  
I Wayan Andi Yuda

A correlation study of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) on rainfall at the peak of the wet and dry season in the Kintamani-Bangli region has been carried out by taking SOI values and rainfall data for the period 1986-2015. The rainfall data used were recorded at 2 rain posts, namely Kembangsari and Kintamani. The research aimed to determine the relationship of fluctuations in the value of SOI with the intensity of rainfall, so that it can be used as a regional management plan when El Nino occurs. The method used in this study is correlation. The results obtained from the correlation that is the relationship between SOI value and rainfall in February were quite strong in the Kembangsari post with correlation coefficient of 0.409. Whereas for the Kintamani post the correlation obtained was weak with a correlation coefficient of 0.308. Then in August a weak correlation occurred in the Kembangsari post with a correlation coefficient of 0.2398 and was quite strong in the Kintamani post with a correlation coefficient of 0.4662. So that the influence of El Nino in the Kintamani area in February was more dominant in the Kembangsari post and in August at the Kintamani post.


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