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After three years of dominance by the cold La Nina weather pattern, El Niño is now underway. The last time a strong El Niño was in full swing was 2016, when the world saw its warmest year on record, according to a US climate monitoring agency, and scientists say this year is particularly worrying. With continued warming since 2016, El Niño could put 2024 in the record books.
El Niño is a natural climate pattern that is triggered by unusually warm waters in the eastern Pacific. Although scientists aren’t entirely sure what starts the cycle, extreme weather ranging from tropical cyclones to heavy rainfall is likely to occur later this year. Di Liberto is a climate scientist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
El Nino is not like a hurricane. El Nino isn’t going to hit you on Tuesday. El Nino is all about changing the patterns that weather plays out in. So when we talk about a moderate or strong event, it is basically saying that El Nino has a strong influence on the climate making pattern.
stick around for a while. During El Niño, the southern US sees cooler and wetter weather, while the US West and parts of Canada are hotter and drier. Hurricane activity generally falters in the Atlantic, but in the Pacific, tropical cyclones boost. Australia generally tolerates extreme heat, drought and wildfires. Heavy rain may occur in parts of Central and South America.
Relief can be seen in the Horn of Africa after 5 consecutive unsuccessful rainy seasons. Whether anomalies could be more extreme depends on where the water is warmest, making things drier or wetter in some areas.
The oceans are already so warm. The Atlantic is very, very hot. The western Pacific is very warm, the Indian Ocean is really warm. So this in itself, even if there was no El Niño, would mean that there is an increased risk for coral bleaching. Lots of different places around the world.
There is also a concern that global sea surface temperature may affect extreme weather. During the last El Niño, anchovy stalks crashed off the coast of Peru and about 1/3 of the coral on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef died. While climate change is doubling down on the effects of El Niño, whether climate change affects the event is less clear. Most of the warmest years on record that we’ve seen in the past are over.
As for the effect of the elmino, because it gives a little extra push to global temperatures on top of the warming we’re already seeing because of human-caused climate change.