El Niño is Earth's rechargeable heat battery | John Abraham

El Nino has a major impact on energy within Earth's climate

The recent El Nino has been in the news of late because the warm waters in the Pacific have helped lift Earth's temperatures to new records. Recent research is helping to track energy flows between the ocean waters and the atmosphere as the El Nino builds, then slowly decays and even changes to a La Nina. This new information is an important advancement of our understanding of the Earth's climate.

As a background, a part of the Pacific Ocean flips between cold (La Nina) and warm (El Nino) phases over a few-year-long period. Sometimes the oceans are in neither a cold or warm phase, and we call that neutral.