What is El Nino? A caprice of the heavens? A scapegoat for every calamity? This book has been devised with the aim of helping the general public understand the El Nino phenomena. El Nino: Fact and Fiction takes the reader on a tour of the Earth's climate machine, deciphering the mysteries of one of its more extreme components. Written for non-specialists, the authors, Bruno Voituriez, a physical oceanographer, and Guy Jacques, a marine ecologist, explain the science of El Nino in a straightforward but lively style. They untangle the events directrly attributable to El Nino and La Nina from those where other causes may be the dominant factors.

This series, managed by UNESCO's Intergovernmetnal Oceanographic Commission (IOC), not only presents the scientific aspects of the themes in question but also the issues as debated by society at large. Science is therefore set within the wider context of economics, politics and society.