Richard Barber, who is Harvey W. Smith Professor of Biological
Oceanography at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and
Earth Sciences, will outline additional uses of el Nino
forecasting at an 8:30 a.m. Feb. 20 symposium during the
American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2005
annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The additional uses he will
discuss include managing fisheries, controlling outbreaks of
tropical disease and protecting marine mammals and other ocean
species. That symposium will be held in the Palladian Room on
the lobby level of the Omni Shoreham Hotel. El Nino gets its
name from periodic changes in ocean currents that disrupt
anchovy fishing off Peru around Christmastime. This worldwide
alteration of the normal monsoon cycle changes wind and ocean
temperature patterns in ways that lead to flooding in parts of
the Americas, droughts in Australia , Southeast Asia and parts
of Africa, and a tempering of the North Atlantic hurricane
season. Barber was part of an early multidisciplin