Impact of El Nino and La Nina on the meteorological elements

Abstract

The El Nino and La Nina have been found to influence the weather at a remote place. In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of El Nino & La Nina on the surface temperature and rainfall over few selected locations in India and abroad. The study shows that the ENSO affects the surface rainfall; however, the impact is not the same over all the locations. In order to find out whether such influence is latitude sensitive, the study has been performed over locations located at different latitudes and at a fixed longitude. To check if the El Nino/La Nina leaves any impressions on the upper air meteorological elements, the cloud liquid water (CLW), precipitation water (PW), latent heat (LH), freezing level height (HFL) and the bright band height (BBH) over a few locations have been studied from the Earth’s surface up to a height of 18 km above. The CLW, PW and LH values have been obtained from the data product 2A12 of the Tropical Microwave Imager (TMI) onboard the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Satellite (TRMM), while that of the BBH and the HFL are obtained from the data product 2A23 of the precipitation radar (PR) onboard the TRMM.