The warm El Niño current doesn't reach Peru's shores every year. Sometimes it's weak, sometimes strong, and sometimes it doesn't show up at all. Why is that? The ocean plays a three-handed game: the fast hand is the surface water temperature, the medium hand is the depth of the warm layer, and the slow hand is the overall tilt of the system toward warmth or cold. The three hands weave together into a rhythm that is sometimes steady, sometimes offbeat.

Previously, scientists only looked at two hands: the fast and the slow. The medium one went unnoticed, so some movements were missed. In the new work, they added the third hand, and the picture became clearer.

The pits in the fabric are places where the system loses equilibrium. If there's one pit, the ocean slowly accumulates heat and then releases it quickly. That's like a pot that heats up for a long time, and then the water suddenly boils. If there are several pits, the system can get stuck on a shelf: nothing happens for a long time, and then everything changes in a short burst. This behavior is called a plateau.

The same pattern appears in nature: predator and prey populations also change at different rates, and they have their own pits. So the new model is useful not only for climate but also for biology. It doesn't say exactly when El Niño will arrive, but it explains why it's so irregular.