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Hurricane Mitch
seen by the GOES 8 satellite,
on 26 october 1998
Category 5
21:45 GMT
One of the most violent of the century is seen here approaching Central America. Its winds exceeded 300 km/h.
© NOAA |
El Niño
Bonanza or Catastrophe ?
El Niño is the Spanish name lovingly given to the infant Jesus (El Niño Dios). It is therefore somewhat blasphemous for Christians to associate their Saviour's name with the avalanche of carastrophes related to it. How
did we arrive at such an unnatural association
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El Niño entered the sciendfic realm in 1891 thanks to the then young Lima Geographical Society. Several of its members were impressed by the extent of the rainy season : from February to April, torrential rains poured down on the desert coastal region of northern Peru, causing havoc in the urban centre of Piura and the port of Paita. |
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The bridge over the River
Piura, which was built in 1870 and had resisted four major floods, was swept away by the exceptional flood in 1891. These geographers were the first to make a link between these exceptional downpours and the simultaneous presence of abnormally warm waters along the coast. Brought by an ocean current running from north to south, these waters are easily identified by the debris that they carry from the Gulf of Guayaquil : palm leaves, bananas, tree trunks, dead alligators, etc. |
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This photo does not appear in the book |
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Captain Camilo Carrillo, an experienced sailor, linked these observations to a coastal current known to the fishermen of Paita as el corriente del Niño, simply because this weak and small stretch of current appeared almost every year at Christmas time. It coincided with the rainy season, which is most welcome in such an arid region, especially for husbandry and cotton growing. |
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The fishermen themselves, who practise small-scale fishing, benefit a lot from this warm current, since they then have access to prized tropical species : dolphinfish, yellowfin tuna and bonito, octopus, shrimp, etc. |
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For them, El Niño is a blessing, or in primitive terms, it is Father Christmas! Sometimes, however, its generosity overflows and causes havoc, as in 1891. Such misadventures did not then affect the resources (fishing, agriculture, husbandry), only the infrastructure. |
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It was the development of human economic and industrial activities and their integration into international trade that gradually 'diabolized' the 'infant jesus', since the decrease in anchovy biomass had no negative effect so long as its exploitation remained below its reproductive potential...
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Authors |
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Bruno Voituriez,
Research Director at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) in France, is a physical oceanographer. He has worked on the physical and chemical mechanisms that control biological production in tropical oceanic ecosystems, especially those in areas of coastal upwelling and of equatorial divergence. He has also contributed to the development of international oceanographic research programmes on climate (TOGA, WOCE) for which he was the co-ordinator for France. He is at present Director of the Centre for Mediterranean and Tropical Fishery Research, in Sète (France). |
Guy Jacques,
Director of Research at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, France, is a marine ecologist. He has contributed to the study of primary production and of pelagic ecosystems in the Mediterranean and in the tropics, and later, in the Southern Ocean. For the last ten years he has dedicated himself to informing the general public and schoolteachers through his books on marine ecosystems, the oceans and atmosphere, and the water cycle. |
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El Niño - fact and fiction
In plain language, from a historical perspective,
El Niño, fact and fiction explains and demystifies our climate and its variations on the most appropriate time scale for Man : the decade.
Some of the photos on this page do not figure in the book. |
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