The 1997-98 El Niño

  • Released Thursday, January 21, 1999
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El Niño, a periodic warming of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, is among Earth's most powerful phenomena. Satellite, ship, and buoy observations show the 1997-98 event as the strongest on record. Visualizing how sea-surface height, sea-surface temperature, and sea-surface winds differ from normal conditions reveals the event's magnitude.

Four animations of data sets in the Pacific from January 1997 through July 1998, showing the difference of El Niño conditions from normal. The data sets are sea surface height anomaly, sea surface temperature anomaly, and sea surface wind anomaly.

Video slate image reads, "The 1997-98 El NiñoEl Niño, a periodic warming of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, is among Earth's most powerful phenomena. Satellite, ship, and buoy observations show the 1997-98 event as the strongest on record.".

Video slate image reads, "The 1997-98 El Niño
El Niño, a periodic warming of the Eastern Pacific Ocean, is among Earth's most powerful phenomena. Satellite, ship, and buoy observations show the 1997-98 event as the strongest on record.".

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

This page was originally published on Thursday, January 21, 1999.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:59 PM EDT.

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Datasets used in this visualization

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.