Scientists around the world have been studying the warming of water in the Pacific Ocean known as El Nino. The appearance of El Nino is known to affect the weather around the world. Scientists still do not completely understand it. Yet they now find they can use it to tell about the future in different areas of the world.
One example is the work of two scientists at Columbia University in New York, Mark Cane and Gordon Eshel. A scientist of Zimbabwe, Roger Buckland worked with them. They have found that when El Nino appears, Zimbabwe has little or no rain. This means corn crops in Zimbabwe are poor. The last El Nino was in 1991 to 1993. That was when southeastern Africa suffered from a serious lack of rain.
The scientists wrote about their recent work in the publication ‘Nature’. Their computer program can tell when an El Nino will develop up to a year before it does. They suggest that this could provide an effective early warning system for southern Africa, and could prevent many people from starving.