Possible connection between El Nino and climate change

Global Business

As climate change becomes more and more front and center right now in Paris, the weather pattern called El Nino is also in full swing. Now researchers are investigating a possible link between El Nino and climate change.

CCTV’s Jim Spellman reports.

Possible connection between El Nino and climate change

As climate change becomes more and more front and center right now in Paris, the weather pattern called El Nino is also in full swing. Now researchers are investigating a possible link between El Nino and climate change.

El Nino systems hit every few years when weaker than normal trade winds in the western Pacific allow ocean temperatures to rise. This impacts climate around the world.

Severe drought and famine in Africa, raging wildfires and suffocating smoke in Indonesia, and possible floods and heavy snowstorms in the U.S, they are all caused or strengthened by the weather phenomenon known as El Nino, and made more intense, say researchers, by global climate change.

Researchers are working to understand how global climate change and El Nino systems may be connected, but research suggests that rising greenhouse gases may be making El Ninos more intense.

El Nino weather pattern causing weird marine life incidences

CCTV’s May Lee reports from San Diego in California.

This year’s El Nino is so big that it has been nicknamed Godzilla. The mega El Nino is stirring up more than just warmer waters in the Pacific. Marine life normally seen in tropical regions like Mexico and Hawaii are showing up in California.

Hammerhead sharks have been sighted in the waters off Los Angeles. Venomous sea snakes have washed up north of Los Angeles on the beaches in Ventura, which is a first.

Whale sharks have been spotted in San Diego, as well as wahoo and yellow fin tuna, to the delight of fishermen who have never seen anything like this.

All of this unusual activity is a treat for spectators, but for marine life, warmer waters spell trouble.

“The warm water is driving their typical prey further out to sea where it’s a lot colder and a lot of the animals can’t reach that and they’re literally starving,” said Kirsten Donald, Pacific Marine Mammal Center.

The worst case scenario is that it can start having impact on species population and start seeing a decline in those species and possibly and even to levels of being endangered.

And if this mass crab death in California earlier this year is a precursor to what lies ahead, the Godzilla of El Ninos will show little mercy.

CCTV America

El Nino weather pattern causing weird marine life incidences

This year’s El Nino is so big that it has been nicknamed Godzilla. The mega El Nino is stirring up more than just warmer waters in the Pacific. Marine life normally seen in tropical regions like Mexico and Hawaii are showing up in California.