- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; 1 edition (Mar 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0446679925
- ISBN-13: 978-0446679923
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 2.5 x 23.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 431 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,156,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
El Niño, the Pacific Ocean-born weather system that has been much in the news over the last decade, "turns dry places wet, wet places dry, cold places warm, and warm places cold." Scientists have only begun to puzzle out its mysterious and erratic workings, a quest that Time magazine science correspondent Madeleine Nash chronicles in this engaging book.
What those scientists have learned, Nash tells us, underscores the interconnectedness--and, in her words, the "teleconnectiveness"--of the world's ecological systems. El Niño may be born in the subtropical waters of the western Pacific (where, among other things, it has helped spark great firestorms in Australia and drought in Indonesia), but its influence extends around the globe. Moreover, Nash writes, El Niño touches billions of human lives, taking a role in the spread of diseases such as hantavirus and threatening food and water supplies. With the ever-growing human population and the enduring presence of the weather system and its cyclical counterpart, things are only likely to get worse, she tells us: "the torrential rains and searing droughts connected with future El Niños and La Niñas will mean still more loss of lives and property."
Nash's inquiry into world weather and the science surrounding it makes for lively, and sometimes unsettling, reading. --Gregory McNamee --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This is the story of the perfect storm system, El Nino, which in its 1997-1998 incarnation created aberrant weather conditions across the world, often with devastating results. Nash, a former science correspondent for Time magazine, does not have an easy narrative structure (the progress of a storm) and obvious characters (those caught in that storm), as other books on bad weather do. She compensates by crisscrossing the stories of the scientists who have studied the incredibly complex system with those who have been affected. The book begins with a California couple waiting for torrential rains brought on by El Nino to wash away a nearby hill and carry the debris into their own house. Readers get a fascinating glimpse of the Peruvian fisherman who first noticed the sign that heralds El Nino: the periodic disappearance of a normally bounteous catch. Nash observes Africa's Rift Valley and the American Southwest, where El Nino encouraged terrible outbreaks of fever. Few places escape unscathed by the system. In between tragedies, the author interviews several key researchers: Gilbert Thomas Walker, a British mathematician, who in India began connecting the various effects of El Nino into one spectacular system; glaciologist Lonnie Thompson, who studies ice caps in the Peruvian mountains; and Ants Leetmaa, who first blew the whistle on El Nino, correctly predicting the most recent event despite much public doubt (he was even teased by NBC weatherman Al Roker on Larry King Live). Nash does a good job holding such disparate material together and bringing alive such an abstract, albeit dynamic, system.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Gary LaCombe was exhausted. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Gary LaCombe was exhausted. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pacific Overture,
By A Customer
This review is from: El Niño: Unlocking the Secrets of the Master Weather-Maker (Paperback)
Floridians tend to associate El Nino with hurricanes, but the Pacific -born weather system also brings droughts and mudslides, even firestorms and epidemics.Nash, a former Time magazine correspondent, explores the "teleconnectiveness" of wind, water and the world's ecological systems as she tells the story of the 1997-98 El Nino. She profiles scientists who research the mysterious weather pattern even as she describes it's effects.
1.0 out of 5 stars
No hypothesis.......,
By Barry (Detroit, MI United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: El Nino: Unlocking The Secrets Of The Master Weather-Maker (Hardcover)
A mix of a novel and science text, neither which is worthy of reading.
4.0 out of 5 stars
An historical storm,
By
This review is from: El Nino: Unlocking The Secrets Of The Master Weather-Maker (Hardcover)
Warm wet winters, hot dry summers - calling cards of the weather pattern El Nino. How something so huge, impacting so many lives across the globe was not recognized truly until the past couple of decades is one of the points that Nash tries to make. After the first few chapters, looking at historical meteorological records and the understanding of El Nino, she continues on and places this weather maker in a larger historical, social and political context. How El Nino and La Nina patterns can affect disease spread, the life cycles of other animals and coral, and the growth and destruction of civilizations are topics for exploration. For El Nino truly defies the traditional way of thinking about climatology and pulls back the view to the global scale. Despite being so focused on a weather maker, the book is fairly jargon free. You don't need to know you isobars from your relative humidity. Some basic science knowledge makes it easier to follow many of her points, but you are not lost in geek speak. I did find that often she would talk about glacial formations using words that she never defines, which makes it harder to make a mental picture, but these problems are few and far between. I walked away with a better understanding of what is going on, and understand the how far we have to go in truly understanding this climate controller. A must for anyone who watches the Weather Channel.
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