NO JAVASCRIPT

This website requires JavaScript to function properly / Ce site a besoin de JavaScript pour fonctionner correctement

Aviso+
News
Image of the month
2007
Jan. 2007: El Niño on time for Christmas

El Niño on time for Christmas

Image of the month - January 2007

Four stages in El Niño development (maps of sea level anomalies, mid-April, beginning of June, September and December 2006), with water masses arrival at the South American coasts, at the Equator level. (Credits Aviso)

This year El Niño, true to its name (El Niño, i.e., the (Christ) child in Spanish), showed up for Christmas. However, if El Niño is more evident towards the end of December, it has already been brewing for some months. Since the beginning of April 2006, warm waters arrivals (or sea surface height elevations) coming from the Western Pacific have been following each other near the South American coasts, the stronger being end of December 2006 - beginning of January 2007. These warm water masses move impact the atmosphere, and thus the weather, all over the world, but especially around the Pacific.

Another view on the successive arrivals of positive sea level anomalies near the South American coasts: the four stages noticed above show as parallel straigh lines in this longitude-time diagram at the equator. (Credits Aviso)

Even if the current El Niño is rather weak, it can have some effects. It is possible, in particular, that it has a role in the current drought in Australia.
Altimetry is among the monitoring techniques for such phenomena, from which forecasting and a better knowledge can be brought.

Websites on this subject:

ENSO Wrap-Up (Bureau of Meteorology, Australia)
Ocean Interpreted bulletin - El Niño (Mercator Océan)

News

Search.
Front-page news.
Image of the month .
- 2024 .
- 2023 .
- 2022 .
- 2021 .
- 2020 .
- 2019 .
- 2018 .
- 2017 .
- 2016 .
- 2015 .
- 2014 .
- 2013 .
- 2012 .
- 2011 .
- 2010 .
- 2009 .
- 2008 .
- 2007 .
  - Dec. 2007: What will next season be like?.
  - Nov. 2007: The ocean is going up and down around the Solomon Islands.
  - Oct. 2007: South Atlantic Anomaly as seen by Doris.
  - Sep. 2007: Altimetry on eddies' tracks.
  - Aug. 2007: Altimetric views of a typhoon.
  - Jul. 2007: Cruising speed measurements.
  - Jun. 2007: Water flowing under the ice.
  - May 2007: Turns of the seasons in the Ocean.
  - Apr. 2007: Discovering a current in the 21st century.
  - Mar. 2007: Malaria and altimetry in the Amazon.
  - Feb. 2007: Ierapetra gyre pops in and out.
  - Jan. 2007: El Niño on time for Christmas.
- 2006 .
- 2005 .
- 2004 .
- 2003 .
- 2002 .
- 2001 .
- 2000 .
- 1999 .
- 1998 .
Press review.
Operational news and status .
News from CTOH .
Events calendar.

Customizable homepage

This home page is composed of blocks called "widgets".

Rearrange the blocks with a "Click & Drop".

Hide a widget with the cross at the top right. Reset or add a widget with the "wrench" icon. The "User" and "Public" profiles offer a predefined organization.

All the modifications are automatically saved as cookies on your machine so as to enable you to have your own specific AVISO+.

Browsing menu and breadcrum trail

To ease your browsing through AVISO+, you can use at any time the main banner items with the interactive submenus or use the browsing menu on the left side of the screen (it is open by default). For more readiness of the page contents, you can fold and unfold the browsing menu by clicking on the tab. At any time you can know where you are thanks to the browsing menu or the breadcrum at the top of the page.