Ancient Clams Yield New Information on Greenhouse Effect

This seems quite a bit incredible. El Nino and La Nina are the alternating warm and cool phases of ENSO, the El Nino - Southern Oscillation. It is a Central Pacific phenomenon involving the equatorial currents, the trade winds, and the equatorial countercurrent. Its periodicity is due to the resonant oscillation of the ocean water from shore to shore parallel to the equator. If you blow across the end of a glass tube you get its resonant tone. The trade winds are the equivalent of blowing across the end of a tube and the ocean answers with its resonant tone - about one El Nino wave every four-five years. The warm water pushed to the West Pacific by the trade winds piles up behind the Philippines and New Guinea which block its passage into the Indian Ocean. This piled-up water periodically returns to the east along the equatorial countercurrent as an El Nino wave. As it hits the east coast of South America it runs ashore and spreads north and south along the coast,up to twenty degrees. Once it has spread it warms the air, warm air rises, stops the trade winds, and mixes with the prevailing westerlies. This causes global temperature to rise about half a degree. These El Nino peaks are visible in all global temperature vcurves if some idiot did not wipe them out. But any wave that runs ashore must also fall back. As the El Nino wave retreats water level drops behind it by half a meter or more, cool water from below wells up, and a La Nina has started. As much as the El Nino warmed the air, exactly as much a La Nina will cool it. The over-all result is a temperature oscillation about a center point that remains constant. Certain facts follow from this state of affairs. First, talk of an "El Nino - like state" is an oxymoron because El Nino is part of an oscillation. Second, there is a time limit during which it has existed, namely the length of time that the Pacific equatorial current system in its present form has existed. Which means since the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea, commonly cited as about 2.85 million years ago. This completely rules out Eocene as a possible host for El Nino like oscillations. These people have either discovered another oscillatory system in the South Pacific or Antarctic or else have erroneously dated their clamshells. They better get to work on that problem or otherwise the paper does not mean anything.

Arno Arrak of NY 12:05PM September 19, 2011