The Effects of Weather Variations on Agriculture Worldwide

Climate variations are a leading cause of socioeconomic and agricultural hardships worldwide. Climatological phenomena, such as El Niño, produce weather effects that are felt by agricultural operations around the world. This article explains the weather dynamics of the Pacific Ocean and explores their effect on agriculture.

The Pacific Ocean’s Climate

Normally, the Trade winds blow westward from the west coast of Latin America across the Pacific Ocean and towards Asia. This standard weather pattern causes warm water to accumulate on the western Pacific by Australia and Indonesia. Meanwhile, colder water accumulates on the southeastern region of the Pacific Ocean. Historically, these cold waters on the west coast of Latin America have yielded profitable fishing operations, particularly the catching of anchovies off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. Similarly, colder waters lead to a season of low rainfall because of the high atmospheric pressure. On the other side of the Pacific, the accumulation of warm and hot oceanic water leads to low atmospheric pressure. In turn, this provokes the emblematic rainy seasons of Southeast Asia, which yield fertile ground for rice cultivation. Likewise, the (low) atmospheric pressure in the Asia Pacific region determines the intensity of the monsoon rains of the Indian Ocean.

El Niño

Approximately every five years, the waters in the tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean warm up to higher temperatures than usual. This variation in water temperature provokes the phenomenon known as El Niño, which reverses the usual wind and rain pattern. Occurring increasingly often because of greater climate variations, El Niño pushes the warm oceanic water eastward from Asia towards Latin America. This causes heavy rains along the west coast of Central and South America due to the formation of a low-pressure zone in the region. Similarly, El Niño provokes drought in East Asia and mitigates the Monsoon rain in the Indian Ocean region. This climatological dynamic has profoundly adverse effects on south Asian agriculture because of the lack of water. Likewise, regions of Ecuador, Peru, and Chile suffer severe flooding and the Pacific Ocean itself becomes the scene of a great number of typhoons as well as other storms. On a positive note for the other side of the world, El Niño has also been proven to decrease the likelihood of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

La Niña

La Niña is a different climatological phenomenon whose name was coined to present a direct contrast with that of El Niño. La Niña refers to a dramatic increase in water temperature at the western-end of the Pacific Ocean, when the Trade winds and oceanic currents are behaving normally. In this regard, la Niña merely exacerbates normal weather dynamics, which can have devastating consequences. An exponentially longer and more severe dry season on the west coast of Latin America as well as longer-lasting and heavier rains in South Asia are emblematic of la Niña.