\r\rIn El Niño years, huge masses of warm water – equivalent to about half of the volume of the Mediterranean Sea – slosh east across the Pacific Ocean towards South America. That mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru.
\r\r\"An El Niño basically stops the normal upwelling,\" Uz said. \"There’s a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web.\" These small plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food – without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 334395, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12176/#media_group_334395", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "In this video, NASA oceanographer Stephanie Uz talks about the impact of El Niño’s warm waters on tiny marine plants called phytoplankton.
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It includes a quick start guide for educators and first-hand stories (blogs) for learners of all ages by NASA visualizers, scientists and educators. We hope that your understanding and use of NASA's visualizations will only increase as your appreciation grows for the beauty of the science they portray, and the communicative power they hold. Read all the blogs and find educational resources for all ages at: the Earth Science Week 2015 page.In case you haven’t heard, El Niño is starting to make headlines this year. Often nicknamed \"the bad boy of weather,\" who is this guy?A long time ago, fishermen off the west coast of South America — one of the world's most productive fisheries — noticed that some years the fish disappeared. This was especially noticeable around Christmas time — giving it the name El Niño, which means Christ child in Spanish. Today we know why El Niño happens — but knowing when it will happen is still a challenge. Normally, winds blow from east to west along the equator, pushing surface water westward. As the water moves away from the east, nutrient-rich deeper ocean water rises to fill the void (called upwelling.) When nutrients rise into sunlight, they cause blooms of tiny plants called phytoplankton. These plants feed the entire marine food web from small fish such as sardines to bigger fish, sea birds, and marine mammals. When an El Niño develops, the normal east-to-west winds die and warm surface water from the west Pacific moves eastward. This stops the upwelling in the east. Without the supply of deeper, nutrient-rich water, less phytoplankton bloom and the fisheries collapse. From satellites in space we see how these changes impact the ocean’s color. Normally, the ocean looks more green along the equator (image below, left.) During El Niño, the ocean looks more blue and less green because there is less plant life (images below, right.) While this color change is subtle to our eyes, it means life or death for the species that depend upon plankton for food. Some animals starve (e.g. sea lions, marine iguanas, Galapagos penguins) while others move away to look for food elsewhere. || ", "release_date": "2015-10-13T17:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:49:13.616416-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 438703, "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a004300/a004387/Screenshot_from_2009_2015_sbs.png", "filename": "Screenshot_from_2009_2015_sbs.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "The MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite has been monitoring the color of the ocean's reflected light since 2002 to determine where plant life is photosynthesizing. A normal year (left) is compared to the El Niño developing during September, 2015 (right). 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