Two Become One: Meteorological Science and the Construction of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Phenomenon

Starting in the early 1970s, something unusual began to happen to the central equatorial Pacific Ocean. Sea surface temperatures shot up, trade winds slackened and rainfall increased dramatically. These were signs, some climatologists said, of a return with a vengeance of a natural phenomenon known to the public as Nin (The Christ Child). El Nin o is a mysterious warm water current which appears periodically in the southern Pacific, provoking climate shifts on several continents. Along the eastern Pacific coast, it breeds strong thunderstorms resulting in heavy flooding while at the same time bringing major drought conditions to Indonesia, eastern Australia, southeast Africa, northeast Brazil, southern Peru and Bolivia. More than just strange