El Niño–Southern Oscillation
irregularly periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a global climate phenomenon that emerges from variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical Pacific Ocean. Those variations have an irregular pattern but do have some appearance of cycles. The occurrence of ENSO is not easily predictable. It affects the climate of much of the tropics and subtropics, and has links (teleconnections) to higher-latitude regions of the world. The warming phase of the sea surface temperature is known as "El Niño" and the cooling phase as "La Niña". The Southern Oscillation is the accompanying atmospheric oscillation, which is coupled with the sea temperature change.
El Niño is associated with higher than normal sea level air pressure over Indonesia and Australia, and across the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. La Niña has roughly the reverse pattern: high pressure over the central and eastern Pacific and lower pressure through much of the rest of the tropics and subtropics. The two phenomena typically last approximately one year each and typically occur every two to seven years with varying intensity, with neutral periods of lower intensity interspersed. El Niño events can be more intense, but La Niña events may repeat and last longer.
The public source identifies “El Niño–Southern Oscillation” as irregularly periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Niño, Southern and Oscillation.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “El Niño–Southern Oscillation”, the useful work is to connect “irregularly periodic variation in winds and sea surface temperatures over the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “El Niño–Southern Oscillation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.