In order to be considered an El Niño, temperatures in that zone need to be 0.5 C above the average.
And then five paragraphs later they even explain it more.
El Niño and La Niña are part of a larger, natural cyclical cycle called the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which occurs in a specific part of the Pacific Ocean.
It’s the fifth paragraph…
And then five paragraphs later they even explain it more.
Neither of those quotes explain what it is. They just explain how El Nino is defined and that it’s part of a “cyclical cycle(?)”
My layman’s understanding is that one makes summers wetter with more severe storms and the other makes it drier during summer.
Those are the effects of the cycle. But those definitions are literally exactly what they are. El Niño is when the pacific is °0.5c above average