La Niña Coastal, also called coastal La Niña phenomenon, is a climatological event that consists in the anomalous cooling of the waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean in the vicinity of the South American coasts, which implies that it affects the climate of countries like Peru and eventually from Ecuador. It is a local phenomenon that does not affect the global climate, so we must highlight the difference with the Oceanic Girl, which is a climatic phenomenon of greater dimensions that consists of the anomalous cooling of the central and equatorial Pacific.
Both the coastal Nina and the Oceanic Girl are part of the La Niña phenomenon, what differentiates them is their geographical location and the relationship between them is studied by the Multisectoral Committee in Charge of the National Study of the El Niño Phenomenon (ENFEN) in Peru. In opposition to the coastal girl, there is the phenomenon of the coastal child, a warm event that has brought serious consequences in the region. For the measurement of these phenomena, the El Niño Coastal Index (ICEN) is used, which is compared with the Oceanic Index of the Child (ONI), and whose negative or positive values will define the intensity of a Girl or Child event., respectively. [1]
The Coastal Girl of 2018
For the austral summer of 2018, an alert was sent for the development of a coastal Niña event that would affect the coast of Peru. [2] This coastal girl can be considered the final phase of the La Niña global event 2017 -18, event that lasted from September 2017 to April 2018 and that had the qualification of Niña débil, with a maximum ONI index of -1.0. [3] This global Niña did not significantly affect the Peruvian coast, until the coastal Nina 2018, which lasts from March to August of this year.
This coastal girl produced one of the coldest winters that has affected all regions of Peru. [4] In Lima, whose average minimum temperature is 15 ° C, it dropped to 13 ° C; and on the northern coast (Piura and Lambayeque) there were the greatest anomalous declines.
