由於氣候變暖，厄爾尼諾現象正在變嚴重
If El Niños were dangerous before, they are looking to become especially destructive in the near future. Already severe and uNPRedictable, recent research indicates these natural weather events are now swinging to even greater extremes.
如果說厄爾尼諾以前很危險，那它在不久的將來將變得極具破壞性。最近的研究表明這些已經很嚴重並難以預測的自然天氣現象現在正朝着更極端的方向發展。
Since humans started burning fossil fuels on an industrial scale, coral records from the past 7,000 years indicate that heat waves, wildfires, droughts, flooding and violent storms associated with El Niño have grown markedly worse.
自從人類開始大規模燃燒化石燃料，過去7,000年的珊瑚記錄顯示與厄爾尼諾有關的熱浪、野火、乾旱、洪水和猛烈風暴愈演愈烈。
It's still unclear whether this is due to climate change directly, but from the limited history we have, the pattern of both looks suspicious.
尚不清楚這與氣候變化是否有直接關係，但從我們有限的歷史來看，這兩種模式看起來都很有問題。
"What we're seeing in the last 50 years is outside any natural variability," says earth and atmospheric scientist Kim Cobb from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
佐治亞理工學院的地球與大氣科學家Kim Cobb說：“我們在過去50年裏看到的已經超越了所有自然變化。”
"It leaps off the baseline. Actually, we even see this for the entire period of the industrial age."
“它突破了底線。其實在整個工業時代情況一直是這樣的。”
Climate scientists have long suspected a cause-and-effect relationship between global warming and El Niño, but while some studies have shown stronger and longer events with growing global temperatures, others have found the opposite.
很久以來氣候科學家一直懷疑全球變暖和厄爾尼諾之間有因果關係，但是雖然一些研究已經表明全球變暖會造成更嚴重更持久的自然現象，但其他研究結果恰恰相反。
The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural weather cycle that has heated and cooled the equatorial Pacific ocean for thousands of years, causing large-scale weather changes. Predicting when, where and how this pendulum will swing, however, has proved quite difficult.
厄爾尼諾-南方濤動（發生於赤道東太平洋地區的風場和海面溫度震盪）是數千年來給赤道太平洋升溫和降溫的自然天氣循環，會造成大範圍的天氣變化。但經證實預測這種週期變化的時間、地點和方式是相當困難的。
Usually showing up every two to seven years, El Niño events are known to cause brief spikes in global surface temperatures, whereas La Niña events trigger the opposite cooling effect.
厄爾尼諾現象通常每兩年至七年出現一次，現在普遍認爲它造成了全球地表溫度短暫上升，而拉尼娜現象則引發了相反的降溫效應。
Still, reliable ENSO measurements only go back about a century, so it's been hard to determine if these changes are 'normal' in the grand scheme of things.
但可靠的厄爾尼諾-南方濤動數值只能追溯到一百年前，所以很難確定從大範圍來看這些變化是否“正常”。
