Chronicling the complex ecological changes wrought by increasingly volatile El Niño – La Niña cycles
Thursday, December 22, 2016 - 08:31
in Earth & Climate
When Brown University Professor Jon Witman returned this year to a small patch of coral off the Galápagos Islands that he had first marked off for study in 2000, he saw virtually nothing—and that told him a lot. An underwater ecosystem that had been teeming with diverse life 16 years ago was now a barren patch, an apparent victim of increasingly strong El Niño weather systems amid global climate change.