"It brings droughts, mud slides, killer storms, and even epidemics and hordes of frogs and rats. Now, for the first time, here is the complete story of the powerful weather-maker known as El Nino." "In this saga of scientists and civilians, murderous storms and ecological shifts, award-winning TIME magazine science writer J. Madeleine Nash reveals the mysterious sources of El Nino and its far-reaching, almost unbelievable effects on the lives of people around the world. She shows us how this vast climatic upheaval unites diverse disasters ranging from the worst outbreak of Rift Valley fever on record in East Africa...to forest fires on Borneo so hot and out of control that their eruption was immediately detected by orbiting satellites...to the accelerated shrinking of an ice cap in the Andes 18,700 feet high." "From the Peruvian fishermen who noticed a warming of coastal waters and christened the phenomenon the Corriente del Nino (the Current of the Christ Child)...to the British colonialists looking for the causes of droughts in India...to contemporary meteorologists, glaciologists, biologists, archaeologists, and others, Nash introduces us to those whose observations and research have added to our knowledge of El Nino."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved