There is interesting history behind La Nina and El Nino. On goes my nerdy hat....
Yes we are suffering from a La Nina that is of similar if not stronger strength then 1974. It causes global problems and has done for the entire recorded history. The discovery of El Nino was made by Gilbert Walker and was enabled partly due to World War 1. Back in Early 1900's the world was suffering from horrible droughts in Africa, Australia and India (claiming over 10 000 000 Indian lives).
At the same time it had massive tornado's in USA and severe flooding in Europe. The English government had high concerns as it had territorial rule in many of these lands and was hoping to discover a way of predicting future events. These events at the time were considered unrelated.
He was sent to India to work on the task. He had the right line of thought off the start and started to collect data form all over the world. The data was so great that it would have taken him decades to work through it.
WW1 broke out and many of the English colonist returned to the motherland to defend King and Country. This suddenly lead to mass unemployment in India as most plantations shut down. Gilbert took advantage of this and made the largest human computer of up to 2000 people simultaneously processing the data. This would never had been possible before the war.
Now the data could be read and he noticed a pattern. Every 5 to 6 years the people of Peru would have unusual lack of fish and also an unusual amount of rain on their inland deserts. The people of Peru said that this always happened about once a decade and always around Christmas of that year. The named the phenomenon 'El Nino'. The words translate to the boy child. They gave it a capital E which meant the Christ Child as it happened only at Christmas time.
Gilbert noted that when Peru had a severe El Nino that the rest of the world also had extreme weather either flood or draught. Through his observations he noted that when ever the El Nino occurred the cool waters would disappear from Peru (which is why their small fish left) and was replaced with warm water (this brought their rain) at the same time in the waters off the tip of Queensland the opposite would happen to the same degree (draught etc). This latter became known as the Southern Oscillation.
We are currently in La Nina where by our northern waters are too warm which is causing the rain. The warmer it gets the more cyclones etc they can predict... Peru at the moment is very dry and they are getting a bumper amount of fish
. I am unsure of the cause of the water temp shift across the Pacific, but this is what effects the world weather and also the extremes we get.
Climate change has been thought to increase the length of time that El Nino lasts which is why our draughts have lasted so long. They say we can expect 10 to 15 years of dry wheather followed by a La Nino in the future.
Take nerdy hat off......
Bad news is flooding, lots more of it.
