Although climatologists believe that global warming may eventually trigger
extreme weather variations like the ones we are experiencing, they say it is too early to prove a direct connection. The outbreak of freakish weather could also have been partly caused by one or more of the following large-scale atmospheric events:
EL NINO
To meteorologists, the weather phenomenon named after a child is not a theory, but a recognisable and recurrent climatological event. Every few years around Christmas-time, a huge pool of warm sea water in the western Pacific begins to expand eastward toward Ecuador and disrupts weather patterns across half the earth's surface. The El Nino that began last year and is now breaking up has been linked to the flooding in Latin America, the unseasonably warm winter in North America and the droughts in Africa.
extreme weather variations like the ones we are experiencing, they say it is too early to prove a direct connection. The outbreak of freakish weather could also have been partly caused by one or more of the following large-scale atmospheric events:
EL NINO
To meteorologists, the weather phenomenon named after a child is not a theory, but a recognisable and recurrent climatological event. Every few years around Christmas-time, a huge pool of warm sea water in the western Pacific begins to expand eastward toward Ecuador and disrupts weather patterns across half the earth's surface. The El Nino that began last year and is now breaking up has been linked to the flooding in Latin America, the unseasonably warm winter in North America and the droughts in Africa.
PINATUBO
The full effects of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines last June probably the largest volcanic explosion of the 20th century are starting to be felt this year. The volcano released 20 million tons of gas and ash into the stratosphere, where they formed a layer of dust that will scatter sunlight and could lower temperatures - by a quarter of a degree Celsius - for the next three or four years. Smoke from the Gulf-war fires, by contrast, never reached the stratosphere and had no measurable effect on the world's weather.
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