El Niño and Snowfall

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (7) ◽  
pp. 448
Author(s):  
Hoyun Cho ◽  
Dustin K. Hardgrove

El Niño (Spanish for “The Boy”) is a climate pattern that occurs when water in the Pacific Ocean near the equator gets hotter than usual and affects worldwide atmosphere and weather. El Niño climate conditions occur every few years but are unpredictable. La Niña (Spanish for “The Girl”) is a climate pattern representing the cooling of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, which impacts worldwide weather and climate conditions.

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 3549-3565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Alexander ◽  
Hyodae Seo ◽  
Shang Ping Xie ◽  
James D. Scott

Abstract The recently released NCEP Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) is used to examine the response to ENSO in the northeast tropical Pacific Ocean (NETP) during 1979–2009. The normally cool Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) associated with wind jets through the gaps in the Central American mountains at Tehuantepec, Papagayo, and Panama are substantially warmer (colder) than the surrounding ocean during El Niño (La Niña) events. Ocean dynamics generate the ENSO-related SST anomalies in the gap wind regions as the surface fluxes damp the SSTs anomalies, while the Ekman heat transport is generally in quadrature with the anomalies. The ENSO-driven warming is associated with large-scale deepening of the thermocline; with the cold thermocline water at greater depths during El Niño in the NETP, it is less likely to be vertically mixed to the surface, particularly in the gap wind regions where the thermocline is normally very close to the surface. The thermocline deepening is enhanced to the south of the Costa Rica Dome in the Papagayo region, which contributes to the local ENSO-driven SST anomalies. The NETP thermocline changes are due to coastal Kelvin waves that initiate westward-propagating Rossby waves, and possibly ocean eddies, rather than by local Ekman pumping. These findings were confirmed with regional ocean model experiments: only integrations that included interannually varying ocean boundary conditions were able to simulate the thermocline deepening and localized warming in the NETP during El Niño events; the simulation with variable surface fluxes, but boundary conditions that repeated the seasonal cycle, did not.


Science ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 264 (5155) ◽  
pp. 72-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Tziperman ◽  
L. Stone ◽  
M. A. Cane ◽  
H. Jarosh

Nature ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 460 (7253) ◽  
pp. 317-317

Author(s):  
Manuel Ortiz ◽  
Michel E. Hendrickx ◽  
Ignacio Winfield

A new species of Mysidium from the eastern tropical Pacific, Mexico, is described, representing the second species of this genus described for the Pacific Ocean and the eighth species reported worldwide. Mysidium pumae sp. nov. is distinguished from the other species of the genus by several characters including: the lanceolate appendix masculina, 3× as long as wide, tapering distally, with a distal tuft of 16 setae and an inner proximal tuft of more than 30 setae, the male pleopod 4 with endopod bearing 3 setae, the exopod with 4 articles, the modified seta from article 3 of the exopod bifid, telson 2.3× as long as wide, distally concave. A table with the main differences among all the known species in the genus is provided.


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