The El Nino ('little boy' in Spanish) that pounded the globe between the summers of 1997 and 1998 was in some measure the most destructive in this century. Worldwide damage estimates exceed ￡ 20 billion--not to mention the human death toll caused by resulting droughts, floods and bushfires. El Nino and La Nina ( 'little girl' ) are part of a seesawing of winds and currents in the equatorial Pacific called ENSO ( El Nino Southern Oscillation) that appears every two to eight years. Normally, westward-blowing trade winds caused by the rotation of the earth and conditions in the Tropics push surface water across the Pacific towards Asia. The warm water piles up along the coasts of Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines, raising sea levels more than a foot above those on the South American side of the Pacific. As El Nino builds the normal east-to-west trade winds wane. Like water splashing in a giant bathtub, the elevated pool of warm water washes from Asian shores back towards South America. In last season' s cycle, surface temperatures off the west coast of South America soared from a normal high of 23℃ degrees to 28℃ degrees. This area of warm water, twice the size of the continental US, interacted with the atmosphere, creating storms and displacing high-altitude winds. El Nino brought rain that flooded normally dry coastal areas of Ecuador, Chile and Peru, while droughts struck Australia and Indonesia. Fires destroyed some five million acres of Indonesian for est. The drought, along with the economic crisis, left about five million people desperate for food and water. These conditions helped set the stage for riots that led to the downfall of President Suharto. El Nino also took the blame for extreme temperatures in Texas last summer--over 38℃ degrees for a record 30 days in a row. In Florida, lush vegetation turned to tinder and bushfires raged. Even Britain has been sweltering with our hottest year on record in 1997. As El Nino builds, ______.