El Niño spreads cold to Europe

Source: Times 26 Sept, 2006 Paul Simmons



THIS winter may be colder than expected. Last week the Met Office revised its winter forecast to advise that it would start off mild then turn colder than average towards the end of winter, around February or March. The reason is the appearance of an El Niño emerging in the Pacific.



El Niño is a lurch in the tropical Pacific seas, as the prevailing winds change direction and warmer waters spread towards Latin America. El Niño varies in intensity, and at its most severe can cause devastating droughts or floods across a large part of the globe. Europe and the UK used to be thought to be too far away to come under the influence of El Niño, but, two years ago, a Swiss team of climatologists discovered that El Niño’s influence could indeed reach Europe, and had perhaps helped to change the course of the war.



They found that the unusually cold winters of 1940-42 were triggered by an El Niño. The ferocious cold of the winter of 1941-42 was a severe setback in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, when temperatures dropped to minus 40C (-40F), machinery froze and a quarter of a million troops died of cold and disease. On the other side of the world, a strong El Niño had set off disturbances in the stratosphere that surged like a wave, and which are believed to have created the cold in Europe.