In recent decades, these climate patterns have been persisting longer and recurring more often. A striking example is the 2020-2023 La Niña, a rare “triple-dip” event that lasted for three years.

El Nino exerts powerful control on Earth's climate ... trade winds along the equator, and (2) a shallow thermocline in the east (the thermocline is the sharp thermal boundary separating warm ...

A sharp temperature and density change—called the thermocline—floats about 100 ... like driftwood blown into a harbor. The birth of El Nino. This animation shows anomalies, or departures ...

El Niño has important effects on the world’s economies ... to accumulate warm ocean water along the coastline of Peru. This phenomenon causes the thermocline—a transition layer between warmer mixed ...

Over millennia, the tropical Pacific's thermocline has become shallower and more stratified, enabling more efficient interaction between the atmosphere and ocean that allow El Niño and La Niña ...