Climate linked to El Nino floods, droughts GLOBAL warming can influence destructive El Nino events such as floods and droughts, according to research by Australian scientists. A study of El Nino by researchers from the University of Wollongong, published in the current Nature Geoscience journal, found that the weather phenomenon responds to the factors that drive climate change. El Nino is a temperature anomaly in ocean water which leads to a major shift in weather patterns across the Pacific. In Australia, El Nino impacts rainfall patterns and can trigger destructive floods and droughts. The study by Helen McGregor from the UOW discovered that El Nino was once much weaker than it was today, indicating that climate change, including greenhouse gases, can affect its strength. "Our study suggests that El Nino can respond to broader changes in the climate," she told AAP. It could respond to greenhouse gas changing the broader climate. Understanding how El Nino responds to the climate will improve scientists' ability to forecast its behaviour, she said. Whether that's just a random thing, or something more systematic, that's the question for predictability.