El Nino Appears to Be Returning

Government weather researchers said that conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean in recent months have begun to indicate a return of El Nino, the condition that El Nino can change weather around the world and occur every two to seven years, but scientists remain unsure of what causes it. For Americans, El Nino has meant storms and flooding on the West Coast, summer heat waves in the Midwest and a decline in hurricanes in the Southeast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that “the evolution of the atmospheric and oceanic conditions in the tropical Pacific during the past few months are early indications of warm episode [El Nino] conditions.”