G'day Nestor,
Quoth you:
> Recent research on a coral reef off Huan Island, New Guinea, shows that the
> last El Niño episodes have been the worst known for 130,000 years. Though
> evidence is sparse and incomplete (scientists compare it with a few pages from
> a large book), the results are worth thinking about. Maybe comrades in Australia can
>give more information...
Just in case this was a hopeful gesture in my direction, I'm afraid cruel
schedules keep me away from the grave business of crashlisting for a few weeks
yet. I do promise to sniff around for a satisfactory reply, though. For now,
all I can say with some certainty is that we have a tighter series of
particularly grave El Ninos now than we've had since the biggie of 1567. Of
course, it's difficult to be sure, but Peruvian fishermen, to whom the
phenomenon is often the difference between full bellies and starving families
(if the current is flowing north, they eat, if south, they don't), apparently
maintain a very detailed oral tradition in the matter. Anyway, it seems we've
had a few spikes over those four centuries that seem the equal of any one
spike these days, but we've never had so many consecutive spikes, or certainly
not so compressed a series of spikes, anyway.
That fits with most Australians' experience, as I've yet to meet one who
remembers having heard of the thing before 1983, when the bits of Oz that
weren't already desert were fiercely ablaze. And we've had three real bastard
Ninos since. I think the last one we hand corresponded to a particularly
nasty La Nina on your side of the Pacific (I am ignorantly speculating, and
could do with some educating here), hence all those murderous floods,
mudslides and epidemics in Central America a couple of years back.
Cheers,
Rob.
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