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El Nino Is Coming Back
Aired August 10, 2001 - 16:08 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: Get ready, El Nino is coming back! Look for it late this year or early next year. But wait, it's OK, don't run for the hills. The experts say it's very unlikely that this new version will pack anywhere near the punch of the one that came to us in 1997.
El Nino, you know, is that thing marked by abnormal warming of the waters in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, it can trigger devastating weather all around, even affect the hurricane season in the Atlantic. Joining us for more is Bill Patzert, who is with the -- he is the research oceanographer at the NASA jet propulsion laboratory, to explain more about this.
Bill, we've got a picture up here -- not sure if you can see it from where you are -- this is actually something you guys have put up that might explain to us a little bit about the El Nino phenomenon, what we should be hooking for if there really is one. This is an image from June of this year, and tell us what we would be looking for if there is really an El Nino effect at work out here.
BILL PATZERT, NASA JET PROPULSION LAB: Hi, good afternoon, Joie. Well, you know, we have to remember that El Ninos come small, medium, large and extra large, and you know, you made your career on that extra large El Nino of '97, '98.
CHEN: Yeah, we've made something of a living off of it.
PATZERT: Oh, yes.
CHEN: All of us in the news media, I think.
PATZERT: Oh, it became that El Nino was the darling of the media. But I think what we are seeing right now is what I would call a bambino El Nino, all right? And the people at NORA are correct, there is something building out there, but I think everybody is going to have to calm down a little bit, this is nothing like what we saw four years ago.
CHEN: OK, Bill, the example of this. Take a look. This is the picture that you guys have put up, over on the right here -- lost the whole continent, I guess -- over on the right of this screen, you are seeing the California coast down here, and it goes all the way down to South America, and if I can move this over properly, you ought to be able to see a little bit more of this. What we're looking for is sort of Peru, I guess, and then into Chile. That's you would be looking for bright colors?
PATZERT: Yes. On our images, which are the measure of how much heat is stored in the ocean, if you see a great big red and white spot.
CHEN: No.
PATZERT: That's definitely the signature of El Nino.
CHEN: But what I see here is mostly green, a little bit of yellow, some red -- thin red spots out there, but not real ugly.
PATZERT: Yeah. Actually, what we are seeing right now, the ocean has finally calmed down. Now, most people forget the El Nino was followed by three years of La Nina, which has given us this very, very severe drought here in the West, and we are really coming out of three years of drought here, which was in many ways more costly and more painful than the El Nino.
CHEN: All right. Let's look at what it looked like in 1997, when we, as you point out, Bill, we in media made such a big thing out of El Nino. This is red and white that are you talking about, right?
PATZERT: Oh, that was big.
CHEN: This big, ugly one.
PATZERT: This is big. And you know, this is really one of the great climate events of the 20th century. There really wasn't anybody on the planet that didn't feel this baby. It was a big Nino.
CHEN: A big baby.
PATZERT: Yeah.
CHEN: A big El Nino. OK. That's what a bad one would look like, we are not at a bad one this time, we're doing much better this time around, at least for the time being.
Let's get some questions to you, Bill, from our online audience. This is Mark Meredith's question: "How long does an El Nino last?"
PATZERT: Well, El Ninos actually only last for about a year. They have a relatively short lifespan, in contrast with La Nina, which actually lasted for more than three years now.
CHEN: And, but when a real El Nino gets going, it really can be a big impact, and that's actually the point of Joe Sturgell's question on the Web. He asks: "If El Nino progresses at this rate, will it cause big problems?" You say this is a baby, baby El Nino. Can it be -- does it have the potential to cause real trouble this year?
PATZERT: Well, you'd have to be a little patient, Joie, because it's never... CHEN: You can't be patient with these little kids.
PATZERT: Yeah, I know, it's never adios with El Nino, it's always hasta la vista, because El Ninos have been around for thousands of years, and he will show up approximately every four to seven years. But when you have an extra large, like we had in '97, '98, that's really only every 20 or 30 years.
CHEN: Well, we hope that's the case this time. Bill Patzert from the NASA jet propulsion labs, joining us on the telephone line, explaining to us the fancy colors they put up on those NASA maps. Thanks very much, Bill.
PATZERT: You're welcome.
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