New Research Confirms El Niño Can Have Major Economic Impacts For California

The core findings by Thomas W. Corringham and Daniel R. Cayan from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, confirm when it comes to flood claims and damages, El Niño is a force to be reckoned with. Wading through 40 years of ocean temperatures confirmation of El Niño and La Niña events, the authors discovered flood damage claims can be ten times higher during an El Niño year. El Niño is a phenomena that occurs far from California in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. A change in wind direction can send warmer water from the Western Pacific to the usually cooler Eastern Pacific.