發(fā)布時間： 2016年06月15日

新托?？荚囬喿x材料：新型厄爾尼諾現(xiàn)象

While it's still hotly debated among scientists whether climate change causes a shift from the traditional form of El Nino to one known as El Nino Modoki, scientists now say that El Nino Modoki affects long-term changes in currents in the North Pacific Ocean.

The research is published online in the journal Nature Geoscience(地球科學(xué)). El Nino is a periodic(周期的)warming in the eastern tropical Pacific that occurs along the coast of South America. Recently, scientists have noticed that El Nino warming is stronger in the Central Pacific rather than the Eastern Pacific, a phenomenon known as El Nino Modoki (Modoki is a Japanese term for "similar, but different").

Last year, the journal Nature published a paper that found climate change is behind this shift from El Nino to El Nino Modoki. While the findings of that paper are still being debated, this latest paper in Nature Geoscience presents evidence that El Nino Modoki drives a climate pattern known as the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO).

"We've found that El Nino Modoki is responsible for changes in the NPGO,"said Emanuele Di Lorenzo, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "The reason this is important is because the NPGO has significant effects on fish stocks(魚類)and ocean nutrient distributions(海洋營養(yǎng)分布)in the Pacific, especially along the west coast of the United States."

The NPGO, first named two years ago by Di Lorenzo and colleagues in a paper in Geophysical Research Letters, explained for the first time long-term changes in ocean circulation of the North Pacific, which scientists now link to an increasing number of dramatic transitions in coastal marine(沿海海域)ecosystems.

"The ecosystems of the Pacific may very well become more sensitive to the NPGO in the future," said Di Lorenzo. "Our data show that this NPGO is definitively linked to El Nino Modoki, so as Modoki becomes more frequent in the central tropical Pacific, the NPGO will also intensify(增強)."

Vocabulary：

Geoscience：n. 地球科學(xué)

environmental geoscience　環(huán)境地學(xué)

South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission

南太平洋應(yīng)用地球科學(xué)委員會(南太地科委)

Coordinating Committee for Coastal and Offshore Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia

東亞和東南亞沿海和近海地球科學(xué)方案協(xié)調(diào)委員

Periodic：a.周期的，定期的，時而發(fā)生的

The quality or state of being periodic; recurrence at regular intervals.

周期性周期出現(xiàn)的性質(zhì)或狀態(tài); 以固定的間隔而發(fā)生

A column in the periodic table of the elements.

屬，族元素周期表上的一欄