From Steve Self, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu
The letter from Paul Hatchwell contains what I consider to be misleading
information about the correlation between volcanic eruptions and El Niño
events (Letters, 10 January, p 49).
In a recent article, my colleagues and I show that the suggestion of a
causative link between El Niños and eruptions is not tenable (S. Self,
M.R. Rampino, J.X. Zhao, M.G. Katz, “Volcanic eruptions and ENSO: No general
correlation”, Geophysical Research Letters, vol 24, p 1247, 1997). Both
time series show a high frequency and events are bound to coincide.
The same can probably be said of earthquakes, although our study did not
cover these.
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