NOAA Magazine || NOAA Home Page || Back to Story CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS IN THE HISTORY OF UNDERSTANDING EL NIÑO AND LA NIÑA Late 1800s: Fishermen coin the name El Niño to refer to the periodic warm waters that appear off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador around Christmas. 1928: Sir Walter Gilbert describes the Southern Oscillation, the seesaw pattern of atmospheric pressure between the eastern and western Pacific Ocean. 1957: Scientists learn that El Niño affects the entire Pacific Ocean. 1969: Jacob Bjorknes, of the University of California, Los Angeles, links the Southern Oscillation to El Niño. 1975: Klaus Wyriki, of the University of Hawaii, establishes that an eastward flow of warm surface waters from the western Pacific causes sea surface temperatures to rise in the eastern Pacific. 1976: Researchers use a computer model to demonstrate that winds over the far western equatorial Pacific can cause sea surface temperature changes off Peru. 1982: A severe El Niño develops in an unexpected manner but its evolution is recorded in detail with newly deployed ocean buoys. 1985: Several nations launch the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere (TOGA) program, a 10-year study of tropical oceans and the global atmosphere. 1986: Researchers design the first coupled model of ocean and atmosphere that accurately predicts an El Niño event in 1986. 1988: Researchers explain how the lag between a change in the winds and the response of the ocean influences termination of El Niño and the onset of La Niña. 1996-1997: The array of instruments monitoring the Pacific, plus coupled ocean-atmosphere models, enable scientists to warn the public of an impending El Niño.