El Niño

A warm current that usually appears around Christmas off the coast of Ecuador and Peru. In this report the term is used to refer to episodic (3-5 year) events when the current is particularly intense and dominates the local population of organisms (the abundance of fish in particular). Such events lead to wider regional or global oceanatmospheric perturbations whose manifestations range from increased sea surface temperatures in the tropical East Pacific to aberrant rainfall patterns. (see also ENSO)