But if you dig further into history you’ll find it’s not new. Peruvian farmers have records of El Ninos 15,000 years ago. The moon causes the oceans’ oscillations because currents cancel each other every 4.5 years which is a quarter of the tidal cycle, and seawater level in the Pacific tips to the west until there is a 62cm sealevel difference, then, just the water in your bath, back to the east, like the sloshing in a dish. Winds are caused by the direction of surface currents, which is why we get easterlies in La Nina and westerlies in El Nino. But as to LN or ENs, meteorologists only call off on them when the year is over. First, when the Darwin/Tahiti sea temperature difference switches, they are called El Nino "conditions", then if they come about they are called El Nino "episodes". If they didn’t happen, they protect the earlier forecast and say it was an EN but it was "a fizzer". That is why you can get both wet and dry El Ninos and wet and dry La Ninas. We should just stick with the oscillations instead of trying to make it too complicated for ordinary folk to understand. In simple terms, it is a 3-yr system. You get a sunspot minimum year (2009), followed by El Nino (2010), followed by a year for tropical cyclones (2011). For instance, you’ll notice that TCs have become slightly more active this year than last year. And next year, when lunar perigee matches eastern declination TC’s will start to peak. It’s nature and it’s cyclic. Sadly many meteorologists seem to be more interested in setting up fancy equipment that can identify anomalies, rather than studying weather basics and cycles. Ken

El nino is spanish for boy. La nina is spanish for girl. Nothing to do with Christ.