Rain Forest Biology and the Canopy System, Sarawak, 1992-2002 The rain forest takes an immense breath and then exhales, once every four or ?ve years, as a major global weather pattern plays out, usually heralded by El Nin o-Southern Oscillation. While this powerful natural cycle has occurred for many millennia, it is during the past decade that both the climate of Earth and the people living on it have had an increasing in?uence on the weather pattern itself, with many biological consequences. In Southeast Asia, as also in most of the Neotropics, El Nin o accompanies one of the most...