NewsHour Coverage
September 9, 1997
A NewsHour report on the heavy, choking smog enveloping Indonesia.
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Outside Links
The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center page on El Niño.
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Choking smoke in Kuala Lumpar, hurricane-force winds battering Baha California, Marlin caught in the usually cold waters off Washington State – El Niño 1997-1998 has already left its mark.
 El Niño, a mass of warm water now in the southern Pacific, is having a global impact on the weather. The warm water increases the water vapor over the Pacific and the Earth's normal weather pattern. The result: heavy rains in the usually dry Southwest and fires in the drought-stricken rain forests of Malaysia.
Named "the little boy" because it was first noticed by Peruvian fisherman during Christmas over 200 years ago, El Niño is a periodic, and huge, phenomenon. This year's is one and half times the size of the United States, has enough water to fill the Great Lakes 30 times over and has 93 times the energy Americans extracted from fossil fuels in 1995.
In other words, 1997-1998 El Niño may be the biggest in 150 years, some scientists predict.
But where does it come from, and what other impacts could El Niño have on the global climate? Bob Livezey of the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center answers your questions.
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