What is El Niño? | Neil deGrasse Tyson & Katharine Hayhoe Explain...

That's the best explanation of El Niño I've heard.

You can tell this woman is incredibly knowledgeable with these topics… She can explain this to a Kindergartner and they would understand! Loved it!

This is awesome! I got to participate in a climate change workshop with Katharine Hayhoe during my master's program, she's a genius.

I live in Lima Peru. We are in winter, we should have temps of 12C, but with El Niño we are having a small summer, 20C, this is the warmest winter i can remember. The impact on agriculture is terrible, as crops fail due to the changing conditions. I know that it is a cycle, but this year has been off the charts. I cannot imagine the drop in temps with La Niña that is to come. Loved the explanation, and yes, the incas and preinca civilizations knew about this phenomenon and adapted accordingly.

For those interested in how the Peruvians discovered El Niño effect, it was fisherman who noticed that at certain period fishing was poor and water was warmer than usual. Rainfall on the Peruvian coast is basically nonexistent, it almost never rains and then once in a blue moon it floods.

The thing that tells me that Dr. Tyson is a scientist, beyond his degrees and his job description, is that he is never shy about saying "I don't know, so I'm going to ask someone who does." That's science -- knowing what you know, and also knowing what you don't know. I try to do this in my life, asking people who know without letting my ego get in the way of learning. If nothing else, that is what I have learned from people like Sagan and Tyson.

Interested in Katherine Hayhoe's work? Pick up her book "Saving Us" here: https://www.amazon.com/Saving-Us-Climate-Scientists-Healing/dp/1982143835

Living on the west coast, I thought I knew a lot about El Nino, but this was very thorough and informative !

I live in Australia, and I was a teenager during the 90s when there was a strong el Nino. We had water restrictions in place and there was a drought. It was pretty severe.

The 1997-98 El Niño was probably by far the worst we’ve had since, especially for us here in the Western Pacific islands (Mariånas islands) Guam🇬🇺 back in 97’ Super-Typhoon Paka ravaged the Mariånas islands, it was a Cat5 storm with winds up to 150-180 mph but when the storm passed directly over the island of Guam the “eye wall” of the storm (which is the strongest part of the storm) winds were estimated around 200mph. The damage was severe, it knocked out the power grid for almost a year on the island🥵 many lost their homes, but to everyone’s surprise, there was little to no casualties. This year in June Guam was hit yet again by a Cat4 storm (Typhoon Mawar) the damage wasn’t as bad as Paka but it was enough that we’re still trying to slowly recover.