How precisely these more intense occasions will impact life on Earth in the future is unknown, however researchers at the University of Utah are looking to the past for answers.In a research study published September 8 in Science, the team utilized animal fossils and human artifacts from the previous 12,000 years to identify an “eco-friendly tipping point” of five moderate-to-strong El Niño occasions in eastern seaside ecosystems– that is, after 5 such El Niño occasions within a century, populations of marine and terrestrial birds and marine fishes started to shift.The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a repeating environment pattern made up of 3 cycles: El Niño, La Niña and ENSO neutral. Results of El Niño and La Niñan occasions on North American wintersNOAAClimate.GOVThe lakes record shows a near lack of El Niño events between 11,000 and 7,000 years ago, throughout the early Holocene. Since the teams research study found that extreme El Niño events did not happen throughout the time this is believed to have occured– around the end of the Pleistocene and early Holocene– marine environments would have been bountiful.See “New Evidence Complicates the Story of the Peopling of the Americas” To confirm their findings, the scientists carried out computational analyses that browsed for population size patterns in all the types they gathered samples of, not simply the ones they hypothesized would be affected by El Niño occasions. They discovered the pattern they determined for the types they d considered most likely to be affected by El Niño held real for the whole assemblage.Pedro DiNezio, an environment scientist who studies El Niño and La Niñan events at the University of Colorado Boulder, states that while the research is “intriguing,” theyre doubtful that the changes in the fossils found at the website can be discussed solely by El Niño occasions.” However, when El Niño frequencies went beyond the tipping point of five per century, the faunal communities inevitably moved states,” he says.DiNezio likewise doubts that the sediment core from Lake Pallcacocha in Ecuador is a trusted method to determine El Niño events.
How exactly these more extreme events will affect life on Earth in the future is unknown, however researchers at the University of Utah are looking to the past for answers.In a research study published September 8 in Science, the group used animal fossils and human artifacts from the previous 12,000 years to recognize an “ecological tipping point” of 5 moderate-to-strong El Niño occasions in eastern seaside environments– that is, after five such El Niño events within a century, populations of terrestrial and marine birds and marine fishes began to shift.The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a repeating climate pattern made up of three cycles: El Niño, La Niña and ENSO neutral. Effects of El Niño and La Niñan events on North American wintersNOAAClimate.GOVThe lakes record reveals a near lack of El Niño events between 11,000 and 7,000 years earlier, throughout the early Holocene. They discovered the pattern they determined for the species they d considered most likely to be affected by El Niño held real for the whole assemblage.Pedro DiNezio, an environment scientist who studies El Niño and La Niñan occasions at the University of Colorado Boulder, says that while the research study is “appealing,” theyre doubtful that the changes in the fossils found at the website can be described entirely by El Niño occasions.