In the waters near Arica at the northern tip of Chile and Peru, cold-water fish that migrate with their families due to the upwelling of low temperatures feed here to their heart’s content, play freely, and reproduce. While living, a disaster suddenly struck.
An "uninvited guest" broke in here. In an instant, almost all the cold-water plankton lost their lives, most of the carp died in batches, and many seabirds starved due to loss of food. Death... Within a few days, the sea was covered with carcasses of fish and seabirds. After they rot, they decompose and produce a large amount of hydrogen sulfide, causing the seawater to have an unusual fishy smell and quickly turn black. The hulls of ships sailing here and even the coastal rocks are dyed black, like a layer of black paint. Hydrogen sulfide combined with sea fog and drifted in the wind, tinting houses and cars in Callao, the outer port of Lima, the Peruvian capital, black. Therefore, the locals jokingly call the black sea water and black fog the "Callao Painter". To this day, when you sail to the coast of Callao, you will find that the color of the sea water here is different from that of other places. It is like a pot of soy sauce soup.
The death of a large number of fish and seabirds has caused a sharp decline in Peruvian fishery production; fish meal processing plants using gum fish as raw materials were forced to shut down and workers lost their jobs; the guano industry also suffered serious losses.
Who caused this disaster? It turned out to be a small warm current, and people called it "El Ni?o".
"El Ni?o" is Spanish, which means "Son of Jesus" or "Holy Child". Although its name is beautiful, its behavior is ugly. In people's eyes, it is a "bad boy" who specializes in causing mischief. Whenever it visits the fishing grounds of western Peru, it brings disaster to marine life. Most of the most terrible disasters occur around December 25, the Christmas Day of Jesus Christ. Therefore, Peruvians call this natural phenomenon El Ni?o.
El Ni?o’s home is in the equatorial waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, where it is warm all year round and the water temperature is relatively high. The equatorial countercurrent flows relatively steadily from west to east. But at some point, this equatorial countercurrent also bifurcates, and part of the seawater goes south along the coast of Ecuador, crosses the equator, flows south, and breaks into the Peruvian fishing grounds, causing the seawater temperature here to suddenly rise by 3°C~ 5℃, sometimes as high as 8℃, has brought huge disasters to many cold-water fish.
El Ni?o was originally a "patent" for certain areas in the Peruvian waters. Some data say that in Peru, El Ni?o means "warm water invading southward." Later, scientists discovered. El Ni?o not only brings disaster to Peru's marine life, but it also affects the global climate and causes "malaria" on the earth. It has caused sudden heavy rains to cause disasters in arid areas, and has caused long-term drought in places with abundant rainfall. It has made the cold winter months as warm as spring, and made the hot seasons cold and cold.
The strongest El Ni?o of the 20th century occurred in 1982-1983. When El Ni?o came this time, the equatorial water temperature in the eastern Pacific suddenly increased by 6°C. Many countries in the world experienced unexpected climate abnormalities and suffered natural disasters rare in centuries. 60% of Zimbabwe's areas are affected by drought, corn production has been reduced by 2/3, and 500,000 cattle have died or been slaughtered prematurely due to drought.
Switzerland, which is known for its sunny and sunny weather, was covered with clouds in the spring of 1982, with severe cold winds and sometimes heavy rains. The rainfall in the first half of May was rare in 46 years.
Starting in November 1982, several weeks of heavy rains brought unprecedented floods to Ecuador and other places in a century.
In short, the El Ni?o storm caused nearly 10 billion US dollars in economic losses, and more than 1,300 people died in the natural disasters caused by El Ni?o.
The El Ni?o that began in April and May of 1997 was no less serious than the disaster it brought to some parts of the world in the early 1980s.
In late January 1997, the southern region of Manitoba, Canada, suffered the most severe flood in 70 years. More than 2,000 square kilometers of farmland and villages and towns were inundated, and 25,000 people were displaced.
From September 14th to 16th, Typhoon Oliva, with wind speeds of 158 kilometers per hour, hit Kyushu Island in southern Japan, killing 4 people and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. More than 500 houses were flooded.
According to statistics from the World Food and Agriculture Organization, due to the impact of El Ni?o in Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and South America, total grain output dropped by 15% compared with 1996. The number of countries facing the threat of famine has increased to 29, of which 18 are in Africa, 5 each in Asia and Eastern Europe, and 1 in Latin America.
According to statistics, there were 12 major El Ni?o events in the 20th century. They occurred in 1925, 1941, 1957-1958, 1965, 1972-1973, 1976, 1982～1983, 1986～1987, 1991, 1992, 1994～1995, 1997.
From the above statistics, since the 1990s, El Ni?o has appeared frequently and the intervals have become shorter and shorter.
How is the El Ni?o warm current generated? Although scholars from various countries have conducted extensive research, they still have not fully understood the mechanism of its production and have not been able to decipher its "code".
Some people believe that it is formed due to the abnormal weakening of the southeast trade wind and the tropical convergence moving southward and crossing the equator. Others believe it is due to a weakening of the circulation flow. Over a longer period of time, the wind volume parallel to the coast weakens, and the upwelling also weakens or even stops. As a result, the El Ni?o warm current takes advantage of the situation.
Some people also believe that the meteorological factors that control the El Ni?o warm current cause slight fluctuations in the Pacific trade winds. Due to the large accumulation of tropical warm water masses in the eastern Pacific, the southerly wind disappears, and the warm tropical water covers the cold water of the Peruvian Current, thus generating the El Ni?o warm current.
American geophysicist Daniel Walker proposed that the main driving force of El Ni?o is the hot lava erupting from between the structural plates on the Pacific Ocean floor. They heat the water above the lava enough to affect the surface temperature of the ocean, triggering the El Ni?o phenomenon.
Researcher Wang Yongji and Associate Researcher Lv Houyuan from the First Institute of Oceanography of the State Oceanic Administration of China have analyzed a large amount of data from ocean surveys in recent years and found that the positions of the sun, the moon and the earth are closely related to El Ni?o closely related. They believe that the slowing of the Earth's rotation and the increase in sea temperatures in the eastern Pacific occurred simultaneously. During the years 1968-1969, 1972-1973 and 1975-1976, when the earth's rotation slowed down, the eastward ocean currents on the equatorial surface peaked. The impact of changes in the earth's rotation rate on the ocean and atmosphere mainly occurs in low latitudes. When the earth's rotation rate continues to slow down significantly, the seawater (atmosphere) near the equator acquires more eastward angular motion, causing the equatorial ocean currents to weaken, leading to the emergence of a large number of eastward equatorial ocean currents, causing upwelling of water along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. Cold water has difficulty spreading toward the equator, causing warm water to accumulate in the eastern Pacific and increasing seawater temperatures, leading to El Ni?o.
In their research, the two researchers also found that above the equator, the distance between the moon and the earth changes with a 4.425-year cycle. That is, January 3 or January 4 every year (a few days after Christmas), is the moon's closest point to the earth. As for the relative motion of the sun, moon and earth, this closest point appears again every 4.425 years. At this time, the astronomical tidal force increases significantly, which in turn slows down the earth's rotation. The seawater near the equator acquires more eastward angular motion. At the same time, the equatorial ocean currents weaken and a large number of eastward flowing equatorial ocean currents appear, resulting in Warm water accumulates in the eastern Pacific and El Ni?o forms.
In short, some major countries in the world are currently investing a lot of manpower and material resources in studying El Ni?o. I believe that one day, the "code" generated by El Ni?o will eventually be deciphered, and people can take preventive measures before they occur.