El Niño and anthropogenic climate change aren't the same thing, and climatologists stress each phenomenon’s individual effects on weather patterns and occurrences shouldn't be conflated.
An El Niño event can alter economic fortunes worldwide, particularly in agriculture. But other industries can be affected too, including energy, forestry, sales and transportation.
An El Niño winter with warmer temperatures and possibly less precipitation than average could pose a challenge for some Wisconsin recreation and tourism businesses, although many already have been adapting to uncertain winters with less snow.
Agriculture depends entirely on weather, with its uncertainties affecting the fortunes of all people, from small farmers to consumers, as the global market shifts food prices.
The El Niño that started in early 2015 and is affecting global weather patterns could be less than idyllic for Wisconsin wildlife adapted to snowy conditions.
The El Niño Southern Oscillation is an irregular cycle in which changing temperatures of surface waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean can result in major impacts on global weather patterns.
The El Niño of 1997-98 was historic, but no two ENSO events are alike, nor are their weather effects in any given location, thanks to differences in how Pacific Ocean waters warm.
Each El Niño event has a different effect on weather conditions on both global and local scales. These differences in large part depend on how a given El Niño develops.
The current El Niño is on track to be one of the strongest recorded. Indicators of a strong cycle have been increasingly documented over much of 2015 and continued to mount into autumn.
