How does El Ni\u00f1o affect our planet?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Depending on its strength, El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s effects can be far-reaching, influencing storm patterns, drought, wildlife populations, and even\u00a0how fast<\/a>\u00a0the Earth spins.<\/p>\n Warmer waters in the central and eastern parts of the tropical Pacific could mean more intense storms there\u2014and those storms can influence weather across the globe.\u00a0<\/p>\n El Ni\u00f1o pushes jet streams<\/a> further south, says Becker. In the past some places including the southeastern United States and Texas have seen more\u00a0rain<\/a>, while other places including southern Africa experienced more heat and drought, which hurt food crops and\u00a0led<\/a>\u00a0to hunger.\u00a0Less rainfall and warmer temperatures in Indonesia and Australia have also meant more wildfires there.<\/p>\n Warmer water in the Pacific ultimately leads to\u00a0warmer air\u00a0as well. In the past, El Ni\u00f1o years have been some of the warmest on record.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reverberations of El Ni\u00f1o can also have trickle-down effects on wildlife populations. The penguin population on the Gal\u00e1pagos Islands<\/a> severely crashed after two strong El Ni\u00f1o events in the 80s and 90s, according to a\u00a02006 study<\/a>\u00a0in Biological Conservation. The warming oceans caused by the weather patterns reduced the number of macronutrients and fish in the water, which in turn may have starved the penguin<\/a> population.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How does El Ni\u00f1o affect our planet?\u00a0 Depending on its strength, El Ni\u00f1o\u2019s effects can be far-reaching, influencing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[194987,23436,194983,194982,194984,273,3191,194986,111,139,69,153802,3100,194988,147,194985],"class_list":{"0":"post-373670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-atlantic-hurricane-season","9":"tag-drought","10":"tag-el-nino-2026","11":"tag-el-nino-effect","12":"tag-el-nino-hurricane","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-heat","15":"tag-last-el-nino","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-ocean-temperature","20":"tag-pacific-ocean","21":"tag-pacific-ocean-temperature","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-super-el-nino"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}