El Nino

I am reading this book called Late Victorian Holocausts in my other Geography class. It talks about how El Nino caused severe drought in some places at certain times, but then flooding at other times. The way I understood it (and I hope this is right) drought occurred where there should have been heavy moonsoon rains.

I remember talking about the El Nino Southern Oscillation in class and did not realize how disastrous it could be.

This caused massive starvation to many Indians in India (which is mainly what the book focuses on) and much of it was due to El Nino and the drought that it caused. Of course, since India was under imperial rule from Britain, the distribution of food was not very good, which also contributed to the famine.

This is an example where one could see how terrible it can be to have hazardous weather in a place that is both geographically and politically not ready for it. Many people died as a result of this famine, as these people were waiting for monsoons to come.

While I was reading this book I just found it interesting and helpful, knowing that I have background information about ENSO that I would otherwise not have had!