The effects of El Niño are now being felt, and have been experienced in some areas in the country, characterized by the reduction of rainfall up to 80 percent, which led to dry conditions or dry spells; by May 2024, 77 percent of the provinces in the country may experience drought, and seven percent may experience dry spells,” announced Science & Technology Sec. Renato Solidum Jr.
The El Niño, which translates from Spanish as “boy child” or the “little one”, used to be considered a local event along the coast of Peru and Ecuador, traditionally used by the Peruvian anchovy fishermen to describe the appearance of warm ocean current flowing the South American coast. The full name they used was El Niño de Navidad because it typically peaks around December, affecting the weather significantly.
It is a large-scale oceanographic/meteorological phenomenon that develops in the Pacific Ocean, and is associated with extreme climatic variability, i.e. devastating rains, winds, drought, etc.
It is the migration from time to time of warm surface waters from the western equatorial Pacific Basin to the eastern equatorial Pacific region, along the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. This condition can prevail for more than a year thus, adversely affecting the economy in both the local and global scale.
What is El Niño Philippines? Drought/dry spell events are associated with the occurrence of the El Niño phenomenon, with climatic indicators such as a delayed onset of the rainy season, early termination of the rainy season, weak monsoon activity, isolated heavy downpour with short duration, far tropical cyclone track, and less number of tropical cyclones entering the Philippine area of responsibility.
A new study finds that historically, there was a strong link between changes in solar output and the onset of El Niño. But now, El Niño is more heavily influenced by human-caused warming.
The research with lead author Paul Wilcox of the University of Innsbruck, published in Geophysical Research Letters, shows that until around 50 years ago, changes in solar output played a major role in the formation of El Niño.
Researchers complain that the oxygen problem did not get the attention it deserves, with ocean acidification and warming grabbing the bulk of both news headlines and academic research, but comparing the three effects — warming, acidification, and deoxygenation — the impacts of low oxygen are the worst.
Wilco Verberk, an eco-physiologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said: “If you run out of oxygen, the other problems are inconsequential.”
Fish, like other animals, need to breathe, and researchers suggested that the rise of microplastics pollution has the potential to exacerbate the low-oxygen problem.
Our future ocean — warmer and oxygen-deprived — will not only hold fewer kinds of fish, but also smaller, stunted fish and, to add insult to injury, more greenhouse-gas producing bacteria.
The tropics will empty as fish move to more oxygenated waters, says University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly , and those fishes now living at the poles could face extinction.
Now, you know!
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