El Niño conditions can cause a wide range of health problems, including disease outbreaks, malnutrition, heat stress, and respiratory diseases. Above-average rainfall caused by El Niño can also cause floods and increase diseases spread by mosquitoes, such as malaria, dengue, chikungunya and the Zika virus.

During an El Niño event the trade winds weaken. Warm, nutrient-poor water is not pushed westward and comes to occupy the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. This warmer water has a devastating impact on their fishing crops which rely on cool waters to thrive.

During El Niño, surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean is unusually warm. La Niña usually impacts U.S. weather by bringing cooler weather to the northwest and warmer weather to the southeast, though just like El Niño, not every La Niña event affects U.S. weather identically.

During El Niño Years Harvests of summer crops such as corn, peanuts, and cotton may be delayed because of increased rains in the fall. Frequent rains may reduce tilling and yield of winter wheat. Wheat yields in southern AL and GA are generally higher than average during El Niño.

An El Niño condition occurs when surface water in the equatorial Pacific becomes warmer than average and east winds blow weaker than normal. The opposite condition is called La Niña. During this phase of ENSO, the water is cooler than normal and the east winds are stronger. El Niños typically occur every 3 to 5 years.

Plant existing cropland more frequently. Planting and harvesting existing croplands more frequently, either by reducing fallow land or by increasing “double cropping” (planting two crops in a field in the same year), can boost food production without requiring new land.

The projections show that feeding a world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050. Production in the developing countries would need to almost double.

1. Agro – chemical based agriculture

• Agro – chemical based agriculture.
• Organic agriculture.
• Genetically engineered crop-based agriculture.

Answer. Farmers worldwide will need to increase crop production, either by increasing the amount of agricultural land to grow crops or by enhancing productivity on existing agricultural lands through fertilizer and irrigation and adopting new methods like precision farming.

The government is committed to doubling farmers’ income in the next five years, as was announced in Budget 2016-17. The farmers would get maximum price for their crops and the interference of mediators would be reduced to a great extent. Direct foreign investment was also being encouraged in this field.

La Niña is a climate pattern that describes the cooling of surface ocean waters along the tropical west coast of South America. La Nina is considered to be the counterpart to El Nino, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the equatorial region of the Pacific Ocean.

La Nina refers to the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. During a La Nina event, the changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures affect the patterns of tropical rainfall from Indonesia to the west coast of South America.

On the negative side, in Australia El Niño causes hot and dry summers in the southeast, increases the frequency and severity of bush fires, reduces wheat export volumes, and drives up global wheat prices, leading to a drop in the country’s real GDP growth.

El Niño and La Niña events are natural occurrences in the global climate system resulting from variations in ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific. In turn, changes in the atmosphere impact the ocean temperatures and currents.

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During La Nina, the following conditions are likely: Lower Atmospheric Circulation: Enhanced east to west flow- Surface air pressure is anomalously high over the central equatorial Pacific, for example Tahiti, and anomalously low in the western equatorial Pacific, for example Australia.