El Niño-Southern Oscillation

Description

El Niño describes ‘the warm phase of a naturally occurring sea surface temperature oscillation in the tropical Pacific Ocean’, and southern oscillation refers to ‘a seesaw shift in surface air pressure at Darwin, Australia and the South Pacific Island of Tahiti’. This graphic explains the El Niño-Southern Oscillation Phenomenon, showing the differences between a normal year and an El Niño year.