CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP
With El Niño, the earth is expected to experience the hottest period on record between 2023 and 2027. Illustrative photo of the drought in southern Spain in early May.
WEATHER – Bad news for the environment. The El Niño weather phenomenon, usually associated with rising global temperatures, has officially begun and is expected to “gradually intensify” in the coming months, fueling fears of further global warming and more extreme weather events.
El Niño could “lead to new temperature records” in certain regions, according to the US Agency for Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation (NOAA), which announced the official arrival of El Niño on Thursday.
In addition, “El Niño may have a number of impacts, depending on its magnitude, such as increasing the risk of heavy rains and droughts in some parts of the world,” said Michelle L’Heureux, climatologist at NOAA, noting: ” Climate change may amplify or mitigate some of its impacts.”
Towards the hottest time ever recorded
El Niño is a natural climate phenomenon characterized by above-average surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, but with consequences for the entire planet. It occurs about every two to seven years.
The last El Niño period dates back to 2018-2019 and culminated in a particularly long, nearly three-year La Niña episode that causes adverse effects, most notably a drop in temperature. But despite this moderating effect, the past eight years have already been the hottest on record.
In early May, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned that the period 2023–2027 would almost certainly be the hottest on record on Earth due to the combined effect of El Niño and global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
The WMO estimates that there is a 66% chance that the global mean annual surface temperature will exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5°C in at least one of the next five years. This was one of the limits laid down in the 2015 Paris Agreement that could not be exceeded.
Significant impact
At this point in time it is not yet possible to predict the intensity or duration of the current El Niño. The last was considered weak, but the previous one, between 2014 and 2016, was powerful and had disastrous consequences. In general, the effects of El Niño on temperatures are felt a year after it occurs.
However, WMO Secretary-General Jukka Petteri Taalas has already sounded the alarm, stressing the need to be prepared as “the impacts on health, food security, water management and the environment will be significant”.
Australia warned this week that El Niño would bring hotter, drier days to the bushfire-prone country, while Japan said a developing El Niño was partly responsible for spring becoming the hottest year on record.
Contrasting effects in the United States
Scientists fear that this summer and next will be particularly difficult in certain regions, particularly the most disadvantaged. “Already marginalized by droughts, floods and storms caused by fossil fuel use, the poor are now having to contend with the excessive temperatures of the El Niño effect,” Mariana Paoli told humanitarian organization Christian on Thursday help
In the United States, El Niño’s impact is likely to be more contrasting: Its impact is likely to be weak in summer but more pronounced from late fall through spring, NOAA says.
In winter, this would result in above-average wet conditions in parts of the country from Southern California to the Gulf Coast, but drier conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley. It also increases the likelihood of higher-than-normal temperatures in the northern parts of the country.
South America, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia could also be affected by increased rainfall, while from the south El Niño could lead to severe droughts in Australia, Indonesia and parts of Asia. In contrast, El Niño tends to weaken hurricane activity in the Atlantic but favors it in the central and eastern Pacific.
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