NASA Maps El Niņo's Shift on US Precipitation
This winter, areas across the globe experienced a shift in rain patterns due to the natural weather phenomenon known as El Niño. A new NASA visualization of rainfall data shows the various changes in the United States with wetter, wintery conditions in parts of California and across the East Coast.
"During an El Niño, the precipitation averaged out over the entire globe doesn't change that much, but there can be big changes to where it happens. You end up with this interesting observation where you get both floods and droughts just by taking the usual precipitation pattern and doing a shift," said George Huffman, a research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
El Niño is a natural phenomenon that occurs every two to seven years, and is created through a shift in wind and ocean circulation. In normal, non-El Niño conditions, Pacific trade winds near the equator blow from east to west, moving warm surface water with them. During an El Niño, trade winds move from west to east--from Southeast Asia to South America--moving warm water to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. The warm ocean water evaporates, adds moisture to the air and falls as precipitation over nearby regions.
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