Charlotte Moser

The tropical Pacific breathes in two rhythms. One lasts several years: the water off the coast of Peru warms and cools, which fishermen call El Niño. The second rhythm is fast: every month or two, a giant cloud wave is born over the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, creeping eastward at a runner's pace and dying out near South America.

The tropical Pacific Ocean lives in two rhythms. The first is fast: a wave of thunderstorms born over the Indian Ocean races eastward and dies out off the coast of the Americas within a month or two. The second is slow: every few years, the ocean surface warms enough to alter weather across the entire planet. That is El Niño. Between these rhythms lies a bridge, and building it took climatologists decades.