Final answer:
El Niño causes warm water to displace nutrient-rich cold currents along the South American coast, leading to marine die-offs and extreme weather that affects agriculture and fishing. It also contributes to global disruptions in weather patterns resulting in diverse ecological and economic impacts.
Step-by-step explanation:
The phenomenon known as El Niño has significant impacts on the coastal environment along South America's Pacific coastline. El Niño is characterized by a band of anomalously warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific, including the areas off the Pacific coast of South America. These warm waters disrupt the normal cold, nutrient-rich currents that support a rich variety of sea life, which can lead to substantial die-offs of fish and marine mammals. The displacement of cold water by the warm El Niño currents can also lead to extreme weather patterns such as catastrophic flooding.
The El Niño effect extends beyond just the coastal environment; it prompts global changes in both temperature and precipitation patterns. The resultant weather disturbances have far-reaching consequences for agriculture and fishing economies, with increased risks of fires, drought, floods, and insect outbreaks. Entire ecosystems can be disrupted, leading to crop failures and higher prices for goods and services. In coastal regions, changes in water temperature affect coral reefs, and altered weather patterns can cause river flows to fluctuate, impacting irrigation and farming, which are critical to the livelihoods of communities in these areas.
Furthermore, climate change exacerbates these impacts by contributing to global warming, rising ocean levels, and melting ice caps, thereby intensifying the already serious consequences of El Niño events on coastal and global environments.