El Nino phenomenon, also known as El Nino ocean current, is a climatic event caused by the imbalance after the interaction of ocean and atmosphere in a large area of the Pacific equatorial belt.
Normally the monsoon currents in the Tropical Pacific travel from the Americas to Asia, keeping the surface of the Pacific Ocean as warm as the inner and bringing tropical rain around Indonesia. But this pattern get disturbed once every 2 ~ 7 years, leading to the reversal in wind direction and ocean currents. Then as the thermal currents on the surface of the Pacific Ocean turn eastward to the Americas and take away the tropical rain by the way, El Nino appears.
The basic features of El Nino are the abnormal rise in the temperature and level of sea water and the formation of a warm current flowing southwards. It turns the cold waters of eastern Pacific into warm waters, causing tsunamis, torrential rain, droughts in some areas and excessive rainfall in others.
The whole process of El Nino is divided into occurrence period, development period, maintenance period and attenuation period.
The name "El Nino" derives from Spanish with the meaning as "holy baby”. In the early 19th century, fishermen from Ecuador, Peru other Spanish-speaking countries in South America found that every few years, from October to March, there would be a warm current moving southwards along the coast together with an obvious rise in the temperature of the water on the surface of the sea.
The east coast of the Pacific Ocean in South America is originally dominated by the cold snap from Peru, along with the movement of fish stock making the Peruvian Fishery one of the three major fishing grounds in the world. When this warm current appears, the fishermen will meet a great calamity as a result of the massive death of the cold water fishes.
Because the worst of this phenomenon happens around Christmas, the afflicted and helpless fishermen call it the son of god, El Nino.
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