El Niño Has Become a Doom Loop

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, along the equator, scientists have drawn a box. It’s a big box, two-thirds the size of China, yet hardly anyone lives inside it. This rectangular swath of open ocean is monitored by satellites and a network of moored buoys that measure minute changes in the temperature of the water, with an eye toward anomalies. Every few years or so, driven by changing winds and currents, the water temperature in this part of the ocean starts to rise; even a half degree…