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

J. Madeleine Nash

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0756770610 ISBN 13: 9780756770617

Publisher: AOL/Time Warner, 2002

Synopsis

Reveals the mysterious sources of El Nino & its far-reaching effects on the lives of people around the world. Shows how this vast climatic upheaval unites diverse disasters ranging from the worst outbreak of Rift Valley fever on record in East Africa, to intense forest fires on Borneo, to the accelerated shrinking of an ice cap in the Andes 18,700 high. Tells us about meteorologists, glaciologists, biologists, archaeologists, & others whose observations & research have added to our knowledge of El Nino. Shows how seemingly unconnected pieces have gradually, over a century, revealed a picture of what scientists call ENSO: the El Nino Southern Oscillation -- a planet-spanning force produced by the interplay of wind & water with the power to unhinge the world.

About this title

Review

El Niño, the Pacific Ocean-born weather system that has been much in the news over the last decade, "turns dry places wet, wet places dry, cold places warm, and warm places cold." Scientists have only begun to puzzle out its mysterious and erratic workings, a quest that Time magazine science correspondent Madeleine Nash chronicles in this engaging book.

What those scientists have learned, Nash tells us, underscores the interconnectedness--and, in her words, the "teleconnectiveness"--of the world's ecological systems. El Niño may be born in the subtropical waters of the western Pacific (where, among other things, it has helped spark great firestorms in Australia and drought in Indonesia), but its influence extends around the globe. Moreover, Nash writes, El Niño touches billions of human lives, taking a role in the spread of diseases such as hantavirus and threatening food and water supplies. With the ever-growing human population and the enduring presence of the weather system and its cyclical counterpart, things are only likely to get worse, she tells us: "the torrential rains and searing droughts connected with future El Niños and La Niñas will mean still more loss of lives and property."

Nash's inquiry into world weather and the science surrounding it makes for lively, and sometimes unsettling, reading. --Gregory McNamee

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: AOL/Time Warner
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0756770610
• ISBN 13: 9780756770617
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 340