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The drought of 1988, during a La Niña year, is estimated to have cost the U.S. Midwest $39 billion in damages. The devastating drought of the 1991-92 season brought world-wide attention to the relationship between El Niño and low rainfall in southern Africa. The direct dependence of food production on ENSO cycles was highlighted in Cane et al. (1994), who showed a highly significant correlation between Pacific SSTs and Zimbabwean maize yields. In South America, El Niño events are known to cause drought and agricultural dislocation in northeastern Brazil, even while bringing rain and agricultural bounty to southern Brazil and Uruguay.
Attention has also been drawn to the relation between interannual climate variability and marine ecosystems, and specifically to El Niño-induced effects. The first widespread international media reports on El Niño were related to the collapse of the Peruvian anchovy fishery following the 1972-73 El Niño, but the phenomenon has much wider implications. The large-scale changes in the coupled ocean-atmosphere system during El Niño lead to widespread environmental changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures, disruption of nutrient supply patterns, and changes in coastal salinity related to continental runoff. This natural variation tends to exacerbate already severe stresses on the environment induced by human activities, especially those caused by commercial fisheries.
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