• Spanish immigrants called it El Nino, meaning “the little boy” in Spanish

By Yohan Perera   

The El Nino phenomenon has pushed up the atmospheric temperature in many parts of the nation, Department of Meteorology said yesterday.   

Director of Department of Meteorology Shiromani Jayawardena told Daily Mirror that Sri Lanka has been abnormally affected by El Nino.   

The temperature in most parts of the nation was high yesterday with the highest temperature of 39.1 degrees Celsius recorded from Vavuniya while the temperature in Mullaitivu, Trincomalee and Polonnaruwa exceeded 35 degrees Celsius. Temperature in Anuradhapura exceeded 36 c degrees.    El Nino has an impact on ocean temperatures, the speed and strength of ocean currents, the health of coastal fisheries, and local weather from Australia to South America and beyond. El Nino events occur irregularly at two-to seven-year intervals. However, it is not a regular cycle, or predictable in the sense that ocean tides are.     We have no real record of what indigenous Peruvians called the phenomenon, but Spanish immigrants called it El Nino, meaning “the little boy” in Spanish. When capitalised, El Nino means the Christ Child, and was used because the phenomenon often arrived around Christmas. El Nino soon came to describe irregular and intense climate changes rather than just the warming of coastal surface waters.