I have been learning to make animations using R. This is an animation of the profile of the surface air temperature at the equator. So, the x axis here is the longitude, approximately from 120° E to 280° E. I pulled the data from the region that Graham Jones specified in his code on github: it’s equatorial line in the region that Ludescher et al. used:

For this animation I tried to show the 1997-1998 El Niño. Typically the Pacific is much cooler near South America, due to the upwelling of deep cold water:

(Click for more information.) That part of the Pacific gets even cooler during La Niña:

But it warms up during El Niños:

You can see that in the surface air temperature during the 1997-1998 El Niño, although by summer of 1998 things seem to be getting back to normal:

I want to practice making animations like this. I could make a much prettier and better-labelled animation that ran all the way from 1948 to today, but I wanted to think a little about what exactly is best to plot if we want to use it as an aid to understanding some of this El Niño business.