El Niño is an oceanographic and climatological event characterized by unusually warm ocean conditions along the tropical west coast of South America. It affects fishing, agriculture, and local weather from Ecuador to Chile, producing warmer and wetter conditions than usual in these areas. In addition, it can generate unseasonable weather in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, Asia, and North America. El Niño (“the little boy” and also, when capitalized, refers to the Christ Child) refers to the name given to this event by Peruvian fishermen as a way to describe the annual flow of warm equatorial waters southward that reached its maximum in December, during the Christmas season.
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