Global Mystery

It may seem like El Niño is a recent phenomenon -- all of a sudden out of the clear blue sky, so to speak it's everywhere, front page fodder for newspapers and magazines, insurance companies are going knock-kneed at the thought of damages -- roughly $8 billion for the last one -- and the web? Search engines spewing out url's by the trillions. You may be thinking where did it come from and worse, is this another greenhouse gas effect? The answer: El Niño's have been around for thousands of years, but it's taken a while to put the puzzle together.

There are historical records of an El Niño that took place in 1567. We can only guess what earlier civilizations thought of the change in weather, and what gods they cursed for the drought, or lack of fish, or massive rains that wiped out their crops. Peruvian sailors who fished in small boats along the western-most shores of South America were the first to give a name to the phenomenon. Normally the waters they fished were cold and flowed from south to north. But in certain years -- every two to seven, it turns out -- the waters would reverse their flow and become very warm. This, of course was not good for fishing; basically the fish food chain would collapse and the year would be a write-off for the fishermen. Because the phenomenon would usually begin to peak around the Christian Christmas holiday, the sailors named the odd weather "El Niño" meaning "the Christ Child." You can read more of ths history of El Nino at the Interactive Timeline.