El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker - Hardcover

Nash, J. Madeleine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446524816 ISBN 13: 9780446524810

Publisher: Warner Books, 2002

Synopsis

Filled with human drama, tragedy, and victory, a compelling exploration of El Ni±o details the story of the many scientists, both past and present, around the world who have studied, experienced, and examined this powerful weather phenomenon, revealing the many forces that affect the weather. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

J. MADELEINE NASH was for fifteen years the former senior science correspondent for TIME magazine. She is a three-time winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science magazine writing award; in 1996 she was elected an honorary member of the scientific society, Sigma Xi.

Reviews

This is the story of the perfect storm system, El Nino, which in its 1997-1998 incarnation created aberrant weather conditions across the world, often with devastating results. Nash, a former science correspondent for Time magazine, does not have an easy narrative structure (the progress of a storm) and obvious characters (those caught in that storm), as other books on bad weather do. She compensates by crisscrossing the stories of the scientists who have studied the incredibly complex system with those who have been affected. The book begins with a California couple waiting for torrential rains brought on by El Nino to wash away a nearby hill and carry the debris into their own house. Readers get a fascinating glimpse of the Peruvian fisherman who first noticed the sign that heralds El Nino: the periodic disappearance of a normally bounteous catch. Nash observes Africa's Rift Valley and the American Southwest, where El Nino encouraged terrible outbreaks of fever. Few places escape unscathed by the system. In between tragedies, the author interviews several key researchers: Gilbert Thomas Walker, a British mathematician, who in India began connecting the various effects of El Nino into one spectacular system; glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, who studies ice caps in the Peruvian mountains; and Ants Leetmaa, who first blew the whistle on El Nino, correctly predicting the most recent event despite much public doubt (he was even teased by NBC weatherman Al Roker on Larry King Live). Nash does a good job holding such disparate material together and bringing alive such an abstract, albeit dynamic, system.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Researchers and their research are Time reporter Nash's quarry in this overview of how El Nino's global ramifications came to be recognized. The seeming increase in the phenomenon's frequency and intensity, some maintain, is feedback from global warming. Proving that proposition means discovering evidence of past El Ninos, and that journey in time occupies much of Nash's general-interest introduction to El Nino. Glaciology certainly can be brought to bear--if drilling gear could be brought to the top of an ice-capped Andean peak. That leads Nash to the adventures of glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, whose triumphs and tribulations are told in all their bureaucratic, technical, and scientific aspects. Nash then follows another expert to equatorial atolls, where temperature-sensitive corals act as another measuring rod of past El Ninos. Handling well the historical and factual material, Nash dramatizes her account with anecdotes of El Nino's ravages, such as failed monsoons, fever outbreaks in Africa, and drenching rains in the Americas. A well-informed overview. Gilbert Taylor
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El Niño, the dramatic, irregularly recurrent warming of vast stretches of the Pacific Ocean, affects weather worldwide. Just in time for what's predicted to be another El Niño year, Nash (senior science correspondent, Time magazine) puts a human face on the phenomenon. Vivid descriptions of the destruction wreaked by the most recent (1997-98) event in places as widely separated as California, Somalia, and Borneo, plus profiles of researchers ranging from virologists to glaciologists, illustrate the reach and complexity of this disturbance. Maps and diagrams, however, would have greatly enhanced explanations of the many oceanic and atmospheric features that produce or are influenced by El Niño. Focusing on the stories of contemporary individuals, this title complements other recent books that examine the influence of El Niño on past civilizations and historic events, such as Brian M. Fagan's Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Niño and the Fate of Civilizations (HarperCollins, 2000). Recommended for public and academic libraries. Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib., Orono
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446524816
• ISBN 13: 9780446524810
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336