The El Niño climate cycle has been responsible for widespread simultaneous crop failure in different regions of the world, a study has found, putting pressure on countries to prepare for future weather events.
The El Niño climate cycle has been responsible for widespread simultaneous crop failure in different regions of the world, a study has found, putting pressure on countries to prepare for future weather events.
A paper published in ScienceAdvances showed that the El Niño Southern Oscillation, a warm water wave that travels across the Pacific every three to five years, causes a variety of irregular weather patterns, which affect crops worldwide.
The findings contradict the long-held assumption that crop failures in geographically distant breadbasket nations such as the United States, China and Argentina are unrelated, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, a partner in the research.
Researchers also looked at the effect of the Indian Ocean Dipole, or Indian Niño, and other climate patterns on crops.
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay
